I never solicited a major label and I certainly wouldn’t now.
Money is the most important thing because there might be a time when you have no label behind you and you have to carry yourself. Money is the only thing that can shield you.
‘Chopper City in the Ghetto,’ real talk, it’s what changed Cash Money from a Bounce label to a Rap label.
I was finding it very difficult to find a label that understood what I wanted to do and really believed that people wanted to hear something honest and a little bit different. So, I did feel a bit like a clown. You’re knocking on everyone’s door trying to get them to believe what you’re doing.
I want to keep the whole ‘Lace Up’ movement going. I want to take it national and international with a machine, a label.
Like everything at Big Machine Label Group, the music comes out when it’s ready.
We inadvertently keep oppressing Africans when we label them by an approximated color – and even when we confuse a specific socio-cultural group such as the Afro-Americans with Africans.
You have social networking, and you can do things efficiently without the might of a big label.
Let’s be honest: the label of model-daughter-of-celebrity mother is… you know, I don’t want to have that label. It’s not who I am. It’s not my values to go off someone else’s name and to be pigeonholed as that. So in a way, that has really pushed me to be more independent.
When you label something a singer-songwriter record, you cover many genres.
If people have to put labels on me, I’d prefer the first label to be human being, the second label to be pacifist, and the third to be folk singer.
Just because I run an indie label doesn’t mean I don’t think Jay-Z is nice.
But I’m real conscious about what I do. I don’t care what the label is. I’m looking at the outcome of it.
When I first started out in the music industry and went to Elektra Records, I didn’t go to be an artist, I went to get a record label started. And they said in order to have a label deal, I had to be an artist – so that’s what I did.
Magic Realism is not new. The label’s new, the specific Latin American form of it is new, its modern popularity is new, but it’s been around as long as literature has been around.
I think what people get confused about is that they want to label me as this EDM girl, but a lot of this stuff is genre-less.
When you have a label stuck on you, people tend to believe it. If someone calls you suave and debonair, you only get offered parts in a suit and a collar and tie. It just so happens I wear them reasonably well.
A soup manufacturer uses the same colors and design on every label to catch the consumer’s eye and assure her that she’s getting brand-name quality, whether she’s buying bean soup or corn chowder or cream of tomato.
The first-time director thing is just another label somebody puts on you.
I’lI say this: I recall entering Congress in 1971 and being called a ‘feminist’ by members of my own party as if it was a dirty word. They didn’t realize that I wore that label as a badge of honor.
I am failing as a woman. I am failing as a feminist. To freely accept the feminist label would not be fair to good feminists. If I am, indeed, a feminist, I am a rather bad one. I am a mess of contradictions.
It is unfair to label me anti-Islam. I am an atheist and a secular humanist.
From the moment you enter the league, everyone wants to slap a label on you – some tidy description of what they think you bring to the game. And more often than not, that tag sticks with you, regardless of whether it’s accurate.
When it comes to fighting for progress in Boston, there’s a long history of people in power trying to label advocacy and hard work as being political in order to avoid accountability and distract from community demands for better leadership.
I wanted to put out a solo record because I was stuck on a major label and sick of it.
I got signed to a development deal when I was 15. That fell through after about a year when the company merged with another label. Then I got picked up by Sony publishing. So I was writing professionally from 16 to 18. Then I started making my own records.
Some people choose to go on ‘American Idol’ or another singing contest, and some people choose to beat down barrooms before anyone even knows who they are, in order to get a fan base, so when they do get a record deal, they have that to put in front of a label.
I just don’t want to give anybody a reason to label me as something I’m not.
I am an American. Black. Conservative. I don’t use African-American, because I’m American, I’m black and I’m conservative. I don’t like people trying to label me. African- American is socially acceptable for some people, but I am not some people.
I’ll tell you where I stand on the issues, and then I’ll let the pundits decide how to label me.
Like Mr. Trump, an entrepreneur and business man by trade, I have seen, first-hand, the importance of the ‘Made in the U.S.A.’ label.
Even with whatever people want to label me with, there are so many other sides to me.
No matter what happens to us in life, we tend to think of it as ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ And most of us tend to use the ‘bad’ label three to 10 times as often as the ‘good’ label. And when we say something is bad, the odds grow overwhelming that we will experience it as such.
We have a mantra at the Big Machine Label Group: Start with crazy and work backward.
When you’re from the East Coast or you’re from the South, people expect you to sound a certain way. So if you don’t sound that way, people won’t label you as that type of artist. For me, I had a whole new lane to create for myself being from Pittsburgh and being a Midwest artist.
A product is most easily sold when it has an identity. So they wrap you all up and put a label on you. And then that’s what you have to be. But what I’m looking for is the opportunity to explore what I can do, probing the limits, learning.
I’ve been doing my record label for 15 years called Dim Mak. I started my label when I was 19 in ’96. I started putting out an eclectic roster of artists. In 2003, we found a band called Bloc Party, and in 2004, we started getting remixes for Bloc Party, and at the same time I was throwing Dim Mak parties in Los Angeles.
My manager was Buddy Glee, who put me together with Mike Curb, and was basically the idea to bring some soul to the label and bring something different to the label besides the Hank Williams situation.
I didn’t suddenly become conservative. It was only the label that changed.
You don’t need to depend on a label, because you’re making that money on your own.
I’ve always been very much in control of my music and my image, and I think one of the things I’ve been lucky about is I didn’t bring a label on board until I really figured out who I was.
I just want it to be normal for every fashion label to have all sizes. Completely inclusive – that’s how it should be.
They say I’m the Hottest MC in the Game. If you label me that, I will live up to it. Trust me.
It’s interesting that we assign the label ‘political’ to art that doesn’t just fit a mould of status quo. Is ‘Downton Abbey’ not political? That’s political! Every piece of art offers a perspective on the world. And what is politics if not a perspective on the world? ‘Downton Abbey’ is about class. It’s also about race.
I went from the most underground band in the world to signing with Madonna’s producer and a record label that is extremely mainstream – it was interesting.
No one should ever feel compelled to replace the development of and adherence to his or her own set of personal values and beliefs with an adherence to some partisan label.
I was just trying to say that it’s unnecessary; you don’t need to label yourself. I guess it came off the wrong way, because then everyone labelled me as gay. That’s not what I was trying to say. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course!
I want to create music that moves me, not just music that is going to get me famous or make someone at a label happy.
I’ve never conformed to what my record label has said and, yes, that has meant that it’s been a long journey for me.
I was with PolyGram; that was the big label that I was with for the longest, like 12 years.
All you needed was a couple of instruments and a few chords and you could be on an indie label.
When I got signed to the ‘Fader’ Label, they got really excited about having me as their new artist. They were promoting my music everywhere. Pharrell was one of the producers who wanted to work with me, so I was really lucky to be one of those people who got to work with him.
Occasionally, I will come across something that has lost its label over the years – maybe the client didn’t want to declare the dress at customs and took the label out – but I’ll recognize it from an image that I’ve seen in Vogue, or a little thumbnail sketch.
People can label me whatever they like. I don’t really care any more.
I think that it’s human nature to categorize and label things. That’s generally the way that the medical and psychological professions work. You look at elements of what you have, and you are able to categorize it, and then you can cure it. That’s generally what works.
It’s pure Black Label. It’s about violence and booze. That’s all it is. There is no plan.
They told me that they are starting a classic label, and wanted me to be the first artist. So I signed, and am producing myself, and writing my own music, but I’m their first artist on their classic label. And I have creative control.
