Mary J. Blige Quotes

I really love crafting albums and thinking of albums as a whole, not just individual songs or singles or just tracks, but a whole entire album.

I don't ever land on an album title until I know exactly what's going on the record, because you never know until it's all said and done.

Normally when I do an album, I have a concept behind it.

Of course, I go into the studio with all the words written down.

One thing that I've often done under the Projectors is build an album from a central conceit.

What excites me is the idea of doing a record that's pretty clean and focused on songs. I've rushed a lot with previous albums and there's not a rush now - it's not a race.

There are still songs that I'm writing. I like to write. I like to take a long time to do my songs, not even the actual writing process, but conceptualizing, getting into the songs. That's why I stopped doing mixtapes.

My philosophy on writing a song for myself is that I always, always, always want to write a song. I always want to write a song. I realize that as a record producer or a singer or whatever I might not, if I recorded on myself or someone else, the first time out I might not give it the right treatment, so that the world or many people will accept it and it'll be a public hit, or anything like that.

You start to think in terms of making an album that might be greater than the sum of its parts. It's sort of like having a lot of footage and then editing it into something that will make sense to a viewer, you know. Sometimes it might involve even working on an older song that might complete that picture.

I've never wanted to name an album from a song title if I could avoid it because I like it to be a body of work.

I have a rough idea when I walk into a studio though.

Of course the playing is important but writing and the establishing of what you are going for is prime too.

I always felt if we were going in to do an album, there should already be a lot of structure already made up so we could get on with that and see what else happened.

I always wanted to, at some point, sit down and consider how to plot out one piece of work, one album, from start to finish.

I always want to put out an album when I know what it's going to be about. I don't want to throw in all these random songs and say, 'Okay, that's an album.'

When I write - I always write on my own - I demo those songs on a four-track.

There is plenty of people I'd love to collaborate with, would love to produce with, would love to write songs with.

We write so many songs, it is difficult to narrow them down.

The drumming helps a lot when I'm producing songs or writing songs. My knowledge of drums helps more in that aspect, (although) I don't know, man; I'm not great at any of them.

Blending is just like writing lyrics or finishing up the song, rearranging and arranging.

I never stopped writing music, I just stopped writing songs. I've been writing music continually ever since the last album of original tunes, "River Of Dreams" in '93.

I have a few songs that I'm figuring out and writing. I'm still figuring out the whole concept and how it's gonna connect to Cry Baby, but I have some ideas, yes.

I usually know what kind of song I'm after. I know what I'm trying to do when I start. I don't always get there. But I try to visualize what it's actually going to be.

You have to love writing a song and architecture. You have to give it a form. It is my job to create a sonic landscape. I like to create ambiance and atmosphere. The writing is the intimate part of it. It is a sketch. The production is the whole painting.

I put all those synthesizer sounds behind "Decoy" and "Code M.D." A lot of things we write together. A lot of things are his, but they don't have that thing I want on the bottom. I often tell him, I say, "Bobby [Irving], if there's a melody, there's another one somewhere that goes with it."