I'm an entrepreneur, a businessman. I've got a lot of money, and that doesn't go very well with the whole 'starving artist in a garret' routine.
I don't see myself as a pop artist. Like, when you hear 'pop,' you're like, 'Oh, bubblegum, jumpy little girly stuff,' and I feel like, 'Uh-uh. That's not me.'
I think possibly, as an artist, you're always treated with a certain respect but also with a certain sort of nervousness.
When I was younger, I was fascinated by David Bowie, for example. he had created an entire myth around himself. It was as important as his music.
People say I look younger than the music I'm doing just because the songs are older. Hopefully I can keep my youthful look!
I'm pretty sure people thought I was like a dope rapper.
People want to build musicians into mythical beings.
I do proclaim myself king of bachata because I have to represent my genre. I have to always come out and put on the Superman cape. I'm pretty much representing my culture. I'm not going to change that. But I definitely don't want there to be a misconception where people are like, 'The only thing he likes to do is bachata.'
The perception that I was just a pop star was pushed upon me by the public, and it's very hard to change the public's perception even though I never really pushed aside the musician aspect of my career. After I released 'Fingerprints,' my peers reassured me that I was on a level that I always hoped I would be on.
I try to really capitalize off of what other rappers really can't do. There are opportunities that rappers I love simply can't get, because... you know... I don't have the tattoos; I have a different image.
I don't sell anything. So, I have a personal image, but I think that's because I'm from an art background, and I'm an artist, and I think most artists do have personal images. I consider myself more in that category of the way an artist had a look.
I felt like 'Owl Pharoah,' not everyone understood who I was as an artist.
A lot of people don't know me as an artist.
Most of the artists were trying to make a living, trying to get laid, trying to figure out who they were. They weren't trying to change the world. That's what other people put on them. I knew all those people. I knew them all, intimately and well. Bob Dylan. I would say that Bob Dylan is as interested in money as any person I've known in my life. That's just the truth.
I haven't talked to any young artists for a long time. But if we did sit down, I'd definitely tell them my viewpoint. If it was Lady Gaga, I'd say: 'You're talented, and you've obviously got the goods... what the hell are you doing with your image? How can anyone take you serious?'
People talk about the pop part - they don't talk about me being an independent artist. I made it look easy, that's the problem!
I want to be a diva... like people-totally-respect-my-music diva, not diva like carry-my-diet-Coke-around.
A poet in history is divine, but a poet in the next room is a joke.
I'm a pop artist, and that's what I'll always be. I don't want to be a 'credible artist.'
Culturally, it's really funny to me that people respect the weird guy as an artist. There can be a curmudgeon in the corner with spiders building nests in his hair, and he hasn't bathed for three weeks, but for whatever reason, he's more creative than the guy sitting next to him that's showered and is talking to everybody.
Mase was never a filthy artist.
It is in fact agreed that I am the plague, the cholera of the benevolent and generous men who are interested in art and that, when I show myself with my plasters, even the Emperor of the Sahara would flee.
It's never gone so far as me wishing I'd never done 'Quadrophenia,' but there was a time when I wouldn't talk about it because I wanted people to be interested in me for other things as well.
I'm not trying to acquire a reputation as serious documentary maker for its own sake.
There's definitely been a focus on the literary aspects of my music, and I always get a little cringey because I don't feel like I'm particularly literary. There's a sort of academic label that's put on me that seems inaccurate.
