Artistic Validation Quotes

When a director can give you a word that allows you to feel less tense about yourself, to make you feel like you indeed are good enough before you even get to the work, you can't ask for anything more than that.

Winning the BBC Music Sound Of 2016 poll has left me feeling pretty stunned at the end of one of the most emotionally and physically intense years of my life.

I've sold a lot of records. I've sold, like, 150 million records, and I don't think I've had that many good reviews. It's one of those things that when you're really successful, critics hate you just because you're successful.

After struggling for so long in the industry and writing so many failed songs and hearing 'no' for so long - I'm so grateful every time I hear a song that I was a part of on the radio.

I was considered by my peers to be a good comedian. So that's all I ever strived to do was get some recognition from my peers.

It's a blessing to have fans acknowledging your craft, period.

I don't want to be some actor talking about how he wants to be a musician. It's something I'm really passionate about and I don't want to be spouting off at the mouth about something before it's out there and can speak for itself.

I just hope that my fans continue to like my work.

I thrive on being on the road, waking up in a different place every day and having my life revolve around music. When you walk out in front of 300,000 people and pull it off, it validates you.

I don't care what people say about my relationship; I don't care what they say about my boobs. People are buying my songs; I have a sold-out tour. I'm getting incredible feedback from my music.

A writer should have another lifetime to see if he's appreciated.

He learned through the way that my father and I felt about his songs, his country songs, that they were great songs. And then he went out and sang them for the audiences that we found, and he found a tremendous reaction to that.

I think, doing a first film, at some point you get halfway through, and you wonder, 'Is this is good enough to define who I am for the coming decade?'

Record sales don't really mean anything. For us, the pressure is imagining some 15-year-old kid in Cincinnati who buys our album and doesn't feel like he wasted his pocket money.

I think because there is the constant looming threat of nepotism and judgment, I really tried to separate what I was doing at MTV, my auditions, anything I was doing creatively, from my family.

I've always felt you are only as good as your next album or next show. What you've done is done. When you get a gold record, you hang it on the wall, and then it's like, 'Yeah, next?'

My absolute idols growing up were Michael Jackson and Prince, and so, to get the stamp of approval from someone like Timbaland whom I know that these artists respect, that is a huge feat.

Criticism? An artist wants praise. Praise.

I know like the Wiz Khalifah one, got me excited because I like his music, and its almost like you know I can relate to his music, so I feel like dang if he listens to my stuff and thought it was good then maybe I'm as good as him, you know what I mean?

Throughout history, self-styled arbiters have taken it upon themselves to decide the question of what can or cannot be the legitimate purview of art.

To finally have people receive and hear what I'm saying is one of the most gratifying feelings an artist can ever have.

One of my real goals was to hear someone whistling a song I'd written.

I once gave a workshop and I asked the women poets there, If you went back to that little town you've come from - these were from small towns - would you say, I'm a poet? And one of them said, If I said I was a poet in that town, they'd think I didn't wash my windows. And that stayed with me for so long, the sense of the collective responsibility of someone as against the individual thing it takes to be a poet.

When I first was a part of 'The Monster,' I really wanted to put it out under my name, but no record label thought it was good enough - until Eminem liked it.

I always knew that I had to direct. That was something I'd wanted to do. Finally, I was just looking at the situation and I said, "I wanna document hip-hop, as an art form, seeing how a lot of people don't take it seriously."