A Quote by R. Kelly

R. Kelly is an image, a brand. That's my job. There's a whole other side of me that's Robert, who is a father, a friend. But then I put on the game face and go into the studio and do the music. That's just another day at the office.
If you face the goalkeeper, you have to wait for him to go and then put the ball in the other side. It's easy to say it but not so easy to do it when you are in the 88th minute of a game. So you must practise.
We go to the office every day when we're writing - or supposed to be writing. It's not always productive, and there's a lot of procrastinating, just staring at the wall, like any other writing. But we just make ourselves go to the office every day for more or less the whole day.
Most of the time throughout my day I like to keep it light. Go to the mall or drop by a friend's house, go talk with my family. And then after that it's studio. Studio is kind of a process. It's like an all day thing.
I didn't know why I was coming to this room. Someone just told me to go to Sam Raimi's office. I knew that I uniquely had the comics version of his job, which was to take Spider-Man and put him into the modern day. But I thought, "Maybe he wants to tell me to cut it out." So I come in, it's in his office, and then Stan Lee comes in, and I'd only ever met Stan as a fan, not as a professional. And then they sit us down on a couch, and roll in an AV cart with a TV on it and go, "We're going to show you the first cut of Spider-Man."
At a certain point I became really frustrated with modeling, like, why do I have to go home after school and get dressed up and put makeup on my face, and then go to a photographer's studio where there's 15 other girls with their books and have to prove myself? A lot of people don't think of it that way, but modeling's a hard job, physically and emotionally.
I've only had a sit-down encounter with Robert once, and that one conversation was the best advice that I have gotten from any individual in the music industry. R Kelly told me that as long as I write life and not music I will always have a job. He listened to several of my records and told me that they were great records and for that to come from a man who has produced hit after hit gave me a comfort and reassurance that making honest and good music was not in vain.
There's that side of me that wants to be the loving, caring father, and there's the other side of me that's just a dirty animal. If I don't let that out, I go nuts.
If I could, I would not do anything else. I'd just be in the studio for my whole life. I would never go to parties, events, and red carpets. I would rather just be in the studio for the whole time. I don't even care. Nobody has to know what I look like. I just want to make music.
I opened up my mind as far as playing music. I was at a Cody Chesnutt concert a few years ago, and a friend introduced me to him. We just started talking about music, and he asked me what I did. I said, "I have these songs and I'm kind of nervous to put them out, because I've just kind of been playing blues stuff, and playing other people's songs." He said, "You should just put them out there, man. Why not? It's just gonna bother you if you don't. The easiest thing to do is to just let it go." So I just took that with me.
I'm never gonna go into a studio and work for a whole year non-stop. Just every day on my own in the studio working, it's just too damn hard.
I'm a Gemini, so there's two people in me. Straight up. There's the nerd who is totally zoned out in the studio, EQ-ing this kick drum, raising this snare one decibel, or swapping this high hat out for another. Then there's the other side who's a performer. I have to go out on stage and be electric, a fire cracker, just run around the stage and give a show.
My car's my best friend. My office. My home. My location. I have a very intimate sense when I am in a car with someone next to me. We're in the most comfortable seats because we're not facing each other, but sitting side by side. We don't look at each other, but instead do so only when we want to. We're allowed to look around without appearing rude. We have a big screen in front of us and side views. Silence doesn't seem heavy or difficult. Nobody serves anybody. And many other aspects. One most important thing is that it transports us from one place to another.
I think some of my inspiration came from just being around music. My family was into music. My uncle had his own band and my father use to sing in my uncle's band. If you want to go to the music influences we could be here all day. That's everybody from Michael Jackson all the way up to people in the game now that inspire me.
I've always said that I feel lucky to live in the era of social media and be a working model in this time. Back in the day, models were just another face. But social media has given people a voice and not just another face. Not only can you show the world your personality and stuff like that, but you can be a brand ambassador easily.
My father was a songwriter and he had a studio, and I was always surrounded by musicians and people creating music. I think I just always believed that that was a normal job, and people waking up at lunchtime and working until late at night, that to me always just was quite a normal job.
I always have been trying to work on the other side of Jackie, and that is, making sure that my appearance, that my image, is right; also, working in the job world, knowing how it is to wake up and go to a job.
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