A lot of artists have been persuaded into doing whatever they can do to gain attention. The media, of course, will position and promote the worst of them to the front page. The sidewalk to crime becomes the marketing campaign. These artists have seen it work and sell millions and millions of records for other artists.
I've always been a firm believer that soul music never dies. The artists we still listen to today, years after their music was first heard are mostly soul artists; Donny Hathaway, Marvin Gaye, Chaka Khan. We still sing along to all of them with our hearts.
Even though it's called Music Of Black Origin, it's not just music for black people. Music is for everybody. I think it's good that black music is acknowledged, and it's open for lots of artists, including white artists who have been inspired by black musical heritage.
I doubt anybody would have pushed me [on the music]. When I was at Sony nobody ever gave me any creative suggestions on the music.
I've been through the entire gamut of the music industry - I've been playing in clubs since I was 14, and I've been on Warner Bros, on Sony - I've had lots of successes and some serious times of struggle.
My commitment to the Olympics is not a political commitment. It's not a commitment to any particular social system or cultural idea. It is a commitment to sport.
Music was born of love. Had there never been any human affection, there never could have been uttered a strain of music.
This has always been my problem with genres is that they've turned into marketing tools. I've never been a person that allows themselves to be in any kind of box and I think that genres can be used as tools to define BPM or something but I think they're suffocating of music and other art. And I think they're inaccurate when they come to describing my work. Maybe other people like defining it, but I don't.
I don't have any sympathy for the subject matter, [but] I have great respect for rap artists. In fact, not for the rap artists, but the people who make the music over which they rap. Rap music - the music itself is incredible - but [the people that make the music] are hardly ever credited.
I've always been spiritual but I've never had a proper context, and it took me awhile to find the proper context. It's hard to realize you can have any kind of relationship with God you want... and so I now have a punk rock relationship with God.
I've always been spiritual but I've never had a proper context, and it took me awhile to find the proper context. It's hard to realize you can have any kind of relationship with God you want...and so I now have a punk rock relationship with God.
So I'm leaving Sony, a free agent, owning half of Sony. I own half of Sony's Publishing. I'm leaving them, and they're very angry at me, because I just did good business, you know.
I do support artists standing by their beliefs, and walking with integrity. We have to find a better way to commercially exploit music, while giving artists their proper respect. This cannot be done while taking their contributions for granted, or trying to control the scope of their growth and power through threats and fear tactics.
I do support artists standing by their beliefs and walking with integrity. We have to find a better way to commercially exploit music while giving artists their proper respect. This cannot be done while taking their contributions for granted or trying to control the scope of their growth and power through threats and fear tactics.
The third point is that for some time the UN has been talking about helping Afghanistan in the reconstruction of the country but there has never been any real commitment by the international community to provide resources for that.
I've got lots of books sitting here that have never been published because nobody could make any marketing sense of them.