Artist Freedom Quotes

My whole team, it wasn't about putting the album out, it was about getting off the record company and going independent or going to another label. To the point we were like, 'Listen, just take 'Lasers.' You can have whatever percentage off the next ten records I do for the rest of my life. I just do not want to be here anymore.'

When I was writing the Destiny's Child songs, it was a big thing to be that young and taking control. And the label at the time didn't know that we were going to be that successful, so they gave us all control. And I got used to it.

Nowadays, performers who want to create their own material put it on the Internet. I never knew whether or not it would make an impression - and frankly, I didn't care that much about how it would be received.

Allow the artist to finish the piece of work before you critique it.

You don't need a record company to turn you into anything.

Because I'm not in a record deal, I don't have to operate in an album format.

It's possible and available to any artist to be himself or herself on their own terms, to be accepted and embraced by black people. You don't have to be a thug to get love from black people.

I really believe in finding new ways to distribute my music.

I have a tendency to think that that stereotype of American movies and Hollywood movies doesn't exist. Of course you have the studios that have a very hard policy upon their artists, but then I haven't really been doing any real Hollywood movie yet.

If I could have stayed independent from the jump, then, maybe, things would have been different. 'Return of 4Eva' would have been an album instead of a mixtape.

'Love Tattoo' I recorded without a record company. I'd gotten turned down by the record companies - they said they didn't get me, which is fine, I suppose.

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

Even though I haven't released a song since 2010, I have still performed, so I don't feel I have been completely away from music. I have been away on a mainstream level, of course. But releasing a single this way - on my own independent record label - is more fun.

I'm actually 100% independent. I'm not a Universal artist. I'm signed to myself.

That's my dream job, to be able to mail songs out to people who want to hear them. Paste my face on them and not travel all over the world trying to sell them.

Back in the day, fans wrote letters to groups - you'd get them, although it could take a while. Now, artists can go online and there's discussions about what you should and shouldn't be doing. The minute you announce that you're recording an album, thousands of people are telling you what that album should be.

Artists have so much more control of their futures - they don't need to rely so much on major labels or big companies to help them. You have artists like Skrillex that can dominate so much that he gets 5 Grammy nominees, and he's clearly an underground artist.

Once you're signed to a label you compromise.

If parents don't like some of the stuff I do then they shouldn't let their kids watch me.

What I want to do right now is give hip hop back to the hood. Before it was a neighborhood thing where it belonged to the hood and the rappers were reporting and there were rules and parameters. Now it seems like the artist's game.

That's what I love about the Internet - instead of having to wait on radio to play your song or TV to play your video, I can use the Internet as a tool to get my music out earlier.

Columbia tried to put me behind other groups, so I didn't wanna wait, they let me out of the contract and I'm glad they did.

I wanted to go back to writing for myself and my fans. I built my own recording studio, started my own label, and decided to use the Internet to sell my records.

I can do whatever I want now. I can drop seven songs in two weeks and fans don't care about whether it's from an album or not. They just care about the music.