Jhene Aiko Quotes

Music is such an intensely personal thing for me, and I knew if I was going to do it, it would be in my own way.

When I got into the music industry, I wasn't focused on being the most famous artist or even getting a major record deal. It was just to make music on my own terms or create my own image, do my own hair, do my own makeup.

If I only acted, I feel like I wouldn't have enough creative expression over my own sensibility, and also if I only acted, the notion of surrendering my fate and future to other people is deeply unsettling to me and it would make me uncomfortable.

My job is to just express something that I want to express. And if I'm ahead or behind the curve, that's for others to decide.

I never wanted to be that fad type of artist. When I looked up to artists, watching TV, I wanted to see somebody. I wanted to touch that person. I wanted to sound like them. I wanted to move like them. That' s what I want my fans to do. So that's why, everything that I do, the music I make, how I dress, it's all based off my lifestyle.

Many people say to me, particularly about my dance writing, 'It sounds just like you.' But it sounds just like me after I've made it sound like me.

I have to be able to be the artist that I am.

I kinda like the idea of having an album that's all me.

Stand up for yourself and fight for your right to be the artist that you want to be. There's plenty of pressure from outside; people tell you how to dress and how to sing or what to sing, but I always felt like if I'm going to fail or succeed, I want to do it on my own terms.

I construct myself and do things how I want to do them, because your artistry is a very precious thing - it's ultimately your whole life if you want it to be.

What I've noticed about Hollywood is, if you go out there shouting about who you are, they will love you for it. But if you go out not knowing what it is that you're representing, and you are just a canvas, they will make you into the thing they need you to be.

I'm not trying to appeal to anybody. I just try to do my thing and make the best music I can make.

I always felt like an outsider of the industry, and now I feel quite comfortable as an independent artist.

My music is not like everybody gonna love it, it's really what I make of it.

Respect is one of the greatest expressions of love. If other people try to write your story, it means they don't respect you. They consider that you're not a good artist who can write your own story, even though you were born to write your own story.

I have never followed what people say it is 'fashionable'. I think that a woman must wear what fits her. That is why I created a style appropriated to my type and my artistical genre.

I can't speak for everybody, I think, for me, I will not be defined by the lyrics of my song. I am a man who does music. It's like clothes don't make the man, the man makes the clothes. It's, it's like that song don't make me, I make the song.

People ask, 'Why would you cast yourself in your movie?' And, for me, it's more like an achievement that I am now not playing all the parts, you know? Like I was for so long, in all my performances and a lot of my short movies. So, that's where I'm coming from, not out of a kind of actress-y sense of myself. I mean, I don't really see myself as an actress, but more from performance: this is how you make something. You do it yourself. You're in it and you write it. I think I keep doing it that way, 'cause it's my way. It's what makes me feel like I know how to do it.

My work is trying to at least define myself on my own terms, and then if other people enjoy things that's a lovely addition.

Don't worry about trying to develop a style. Style is what you can't help doing. If you write enough, you draw enough, you'll have a style, whether you want it or not. Don't worry about whether you're "commercial". Tell your own stories, draw your own pictures. Let other people follow you.

Right away, I knew I didn't want to have that look of other guys with long hair and bell-bottom pants, because everybody else had that look. I kind of adopted my boarding-school look, which made me stand out. Then the next thing you know, the first song on my first record is a song called "School Days." It's about going to the boarding school I went to. So then I just started to write about myself. The very first song I ever wrote was about a guy I met in a boatyard that we were working in. So I've always had this thing about sticking to more or less what I knew.

I don't think you can separate a person's "style" and his persona. If you're writing or improvising honestly, you will inevitably reflect who you are.

I started to write songs. And I started to like what I was writing. I think it's a new way for me to express things that are closer to myself than when I play a role, because, of course, it's really not me. I'm finding a new way. I don't know what it's going to be. But I know that I will need to give it to people one day.

I think that, when you're writing your songs, there's always a debate about whether, is that you in the song? Is it not you in the song?

I think if you're lucky enough to find a voice in whatever you do, that voice will come sneaking out no matter what.