I only get involved with projects as a producer if I feel creatively inspired.
I love power. But it is as an artist that I love it. I love it as a musician loves his violin, to draw out its sounds and chords and harmonies.
Every so often, you want to map out your plot mythology but never so specifically that you can't let a story surprise you. You want to allow the type of action of the writer's room so that you have the ability to take a left turn.
Sometimes being an actor is being a song in someone else's mixtape, so I really understand why more and more actors are making films of their own.
The main thing is we never dissolved our Gang Starr contract. We are still signed to each other. We never disbanded the group. If Guru really wanted to super-dead it he would have said, 'Yo, I want out.' And I still would have tried to convince him to stay. We are still Gang Starr.
Nothing is really media driven or committee driven, so you can actually just produce something.
Directing 'The Office' is kind of like someone going, 'Would you like to drive my Lamborghini?' And I'm like 'Yes, I would like to drive your Lamborghini. That sounds like fun.'
I do not allow fan-fiction. The characters are copyrighted. It upsets me terribly to even think about fan-fiction with my characters. I advise my readers to write your own original stories with your own characters. It is absolutely essential that you respect my wishes.
Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.
With my career, everything I do is me. There's no one that handles telling me what I should be about or how I should dress or anything. I'm hands on with absolutely everything. When I'm writing a song, I'm already thinking of the visual for the song and I'm already thinking of what I'm going to wear in that visual and what I'm going to wear when I perform. It all goes hand in hand. Everything I do is just me expressing different sides of myself.
Growing up the son of a director has made me very aware of the various turns that a directing career can take. Sometimes your films turn out exactly as you want. Sometimes they don't. I spent a lot of my childhood on sets. I think as a joke, my father gave me a line of dialogue in each of his films during the worst moments of my puberty.
If the director has clarity of thought and vision, you are bound to just go ahead and do what he wants to do. I respect that.
Being an indie queen, people think I have all these choices. Like I've just been sitting around waiting for the best indie film that I deem acceptable.
I resent the fact that a parental warning sticker has to be included on an album as cover art. To me that's censorship.
Sometimes you get involved in a film because you just love making movies and you want to keep working. Sometimes you're lucky enough to find something that you really care about. Therefore, now I'm emphasizing developing my own projects and writing my own screenplays, so that I can do exactly what I like to do.
When you are doing music videos through the '90s, which I did, and the 2000s, you were put in the position, really, as an independent filmmaker. You were being financed by a major record company or a minor record company or whatever.
Every big-budget film is powered by a director's vision. I blindly follow the instructions of my director, believe in him, and deliver what he exactly wants from me.
I've never made any film that I wouldn't go back and re-edit.
I basically was in charge of the Jackson 5 - all their creative, when it came down to the studio, and all their musical endeavors.
I write what I write.
A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.
I have a notebook of concepts. There are titles everywhere if you are looking for them. I pull from them. There is a secret list that I keep for myself about what I want to sing about, and those are the ones I know I am not going to give up for someone else.
The world has changed a lot since I started making records.I used to go into a studio and there were songs there, chosen for me to see if I liked them. I wasn't encouraged to write.
The system did not want me to make 'Go.' And I sort of stood up to the system and made the movie I wanted to make, and the fact that I did that and I'm proud of the movie means I'm really proud of myself when I look back on that.
In the end, the actor's main power is the power to say, 'No.'
