I used to do volunteer work in poor areas of Cairo, and people would gather their money together to get a satellite dish. You'd see them huddling around and for the first time seeing issues being debated on TV that had never been talked about before....
There's book smart, there is street smart, there's relationship smart, there's too many different kinds of smarts to know all of them. Everybody doesn't know every kind of smart. There's money smart, there's movie smart, there's computer smart. There...
I have more perspective now, and am happier now. It's not that I don't want success, but I now know I can have success at a lower level and make much more money doing it by myself. I make $6 or $7 bucks a record vs. nothing off those other records.
I often call Daptone the Motown and Stax of today. But in some ways, it's different. At Motown, a lot of the musicians didn't get recognized, music got stolen, and people didn't get paid. Or the label would just throw them a pinch of money for their ...
You know, if a band on a label sold a few hundred thousand copies of their record these days, they wouldn't make any money. But if a band can pump out 10 million copies of a record for free, and 50,000 of those fans come to the band's website to watc...
When I decided to be a musician I reckoned that that was going to be the way of less profit, less money. I was sort of giving up the idea of making a lot of money. It was what I loved to do. I would have done it anyway. If I'd had to work at Taco Bel...
All it takes to become president is money and a certain kind of power. Being president is the first thing I can shoot for, not the highest. It may come to a point where people take rock and roll musicians more seriously than they take politicians. It...
I understand that I have a certain look that can be used to my advantage. I know the power of that when I walk into a room and talk to people, and I can use it as an advertising tool. Now I am actually selling me, my face, my thoughts. So I am my guy...
Most of the time, as an artist, I can be self-indulgent, fulfilling my own impulses, embracing imagery that contains poetry on my own terms, without immediate regard to an audience or the particular placement of my finished work.
I think the first time I really heard poetry was in the schoolyard. Just the little limericks that kids say when they're jumping rope and playing games. I think that's the first time I heard rhyming words - I don't know if I'd call that the definitiv...
My first spoken word poem, packed with all the wisdom of a 14-year-old, was about the injustice of being seen as unfeminine. The poem was very indignant, and mainly exaggerated, but the only spoken word poetry that I had seen up until that point was ...
I never ever, ever say anything against my husband to anyone except my husband. Everyone gets in fights, and I think the natural propensity for women is, 'Oh I want to talk to someone.' But the minute you take what bothers you outside the bond betwee...
When your child stops breathing 60 times a night, you don't worry about what's going on next year or even next week. You put aside thoughts about which preschool you're going to enroll him in and focus on how he's doing right now. It's not the Norman...
We feel unsatisfied until we know ourselves akin even with that greatness which made the spots on which it rested hallowed; and until, by our own lives, and by converse with the thoughts they have bequeathed us, we feel that union and relationship of...
Unfortunately, we are living in an era where plenty of songs with vulgar, objectionable lyrics are also becoming popular. It's a disturbing trend, and I feel really sad when I see small kids dancing to such numbers in television shows. In my career s...
I have always loved a hard-faced girl. I get that Alison Goldfrapp isn't easy, and I like her belligerence. She's deeply sexy and controlled, like a Strict Machine, and it seems to wind the b'jesus out of the women I know. On the outside, I watch and...
People need to understand that the Lauryn Hill they were exposed to in the beginning was all that was allowed in that arena at the time. I had to step away for the sake of the machine. I was being way too compromised. I felt uncomfortable having to s...
Through the years, I, like you, have experienced pressures and disappointments that would have crushed me had I not been able to draw upon a source of wisdom and strength far greater than my own. He has never forgotten or forsaken me, and I have come...
My father was a jazz tenor sax player. He played in a lot of big bands. So I had that sound around me all the time. The first record that really caught my ear was Clifford Brown's 'Brownie Eyes.' I grew up listening to John Coltrane and Illinois Jacq...
I am happy. I have a wonderful marriage. I was in a not-great second marriage for 20 years, then I fell in love with Steve, my first husband, again, and we remarried. I wore the dress from our first wedding in 1982 - it was tight, but I could get int...
I don't think you can cover a song unless you love it and have a relationship with it. With 'Golden Heart' I felt a sense of responsibility. And when we were recording it in the studio, it felt almost dream-like. Something you might hear if you were ...
