A Quote by John Legend

Music business is not for everyone. But if you have it in you, you have that passion, if you have that energy in you that you really want to make something creative and make something that's going to impact the world, then go for it, do it and don't let anybody tell you no.
I love the intimacy and the passion and the danger that go into independent filmmaking. Because it comes out of a creative necessity. It comes from people who really want to make a movie and want to make a difference and want to grab an audience by the gullet and show them something different.
When you go to a studio with something you want to make, or they come to you with something they want to make, more often than not, it's a tent pole. Not something one single person is really passionate about on a creative level.
I'm not here to put my music out on the Internet with no support and then say I got creative freedom. I've got creative freedom wherever I go: I don't create anything that I don't want to create. That's freedom. Since when does a company force you to make something that you don't want to make? If they do that, you leave.
Every video I make, I want to make sure that it's doing something entertaining or hopefully inspiring or maybe teaching somebody something or sharing my mistakes so that they can learn from them or anything that will make a positive impact in the world.
I want to be remembered for doing something bigger than myself and making a positive impact on the world. I want to make my life worth something and to die a legend and to make my family proud.
Just try to make an impact on the game somehow whether it is on the defensive or offensive end. I think that has always been something that I have hung my hat on especially offensively. If it is not the night, then go make a play defensively and get after, dive for loose balls, create a charge, make an impact that way.
I thought I had everything going for me. I wasn't listening to nobody. And my dad was like, 'Uh-uh, you can't make money from music. You have to be a doctor, a lawyer, engineer. Something that's going to do something for this world. Music doesn't do anything.' And I had to fight that, his passion, and fight the society that I was from.
I really want to make art. I want to create something that's going to have a lasting impact.
One of my central philosophies is to be creatively driven so I have to be extraordinarily creative in the way I get things done and I have to be really flexible. Striving for the best creativity can be a really moving target if you're trying to budget anything because if you come up with a better idea for something and it's going to make the movie stronger then you have to do it. And that's what I do. The difficulty is that you have to use more judgement as a producer then you might in other places. I have to make unbelievably great creative decisions.
Once you go on stage you're essentially creating the world that people want to participate in. The worst thing you can do is go out on stage with the idea that you're going to communicate something you've learned and if you do it really well, they'll approve. If you go out in an approval process, you will be so nervous and so preoccupied you'll never get to the heart of what it is you want to make music with.
I do music mainly just for myself in the beginning, and of course it's great when I get a reaction, but I'm more interested in hearing something unusual to my ears, and that's what I'm also looking for in other people's music. It's not interesting to look for a sound that is made to make everyone on the planet move - I wanna have both, I want something danceable but very creative and unusual.
I just don't want to ever make decisions based on something that I feel like I shouldn't do, or if it's a logical career step. It has to be something that inspires me. Because if it's not something that inspires me, then I'm not going to do it well. And that doesn't help anybody.
You can tell if there's magic in something. When you start it, you want to finish it and you want it to be perfect. If you're not inspired, and you're working hard to pull inspiration from somewhere and make a song something it's not, then it's very contrived, and I don't like to write music that's contrived.
You don't want to go and make something, then go out and do shows, if you're not really into it. You don't want to go out there and make people feel like you're grudging playing them a song. That's a disturbing thought.
If you just go out and try to make money by starting a business, you're going to come up with something that's just like what everyone else has done. But if you look at the world and see opportunities that can be taken more seriously, then you come up with a great idea.
Sometimes the music just has to tell the story without you trying to tell the story. It depends on the type of music you want to make. If it makes you feel good and party then you go with that. If it makes you feel like speaking on something real and doing a story then it's the beat just has to have the story.
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