Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" My first reaction to being pigeonholed or pushed into certain confines is to be like, 'No, I'm the opposite,' you know? Like, don't put me in a stereotypical black-girl category, because I'm not like that; I'm doing this thing over here. "

Kelela

You

Over

Related Quotes:

" Growing up, Missy Elliot and Janet Jackson were definitely major references. "

Kelela

Growing

Major

" It means so much to be able to share myself with the world. "

Kelela

Myself

World

" The act of me just being robust in the world is so radical - it's so radical for a black woman to think she's going to be a star, because it takes so much to get there. It's still a battle every day, but I feel happy because I feel like I cracked the code and figured out how to work through it. Now I want to give the map to other women. "

" I'm coming from the zone of Faith Evans, but with weird production. "

" The most rewarding thing for someone like me is for someone else to find solace through my music. "

Kelela

Someone

Through

" As a black woman, there's so much pride and communication through hair. It's naturally something that you are excited to embellish on and be creative about. "

" I'm quite scrutinous when it comes to who I put myself in the room with. "

" Popular music was this abstraction - an abstraction that I was relating to immensely but was ultimately far away. "

" That's pretty much how every song of mine works - I start with gibberish and melody and phrasing. I speak it naturally first. And then I think about lyrics that fit into that. "

" Innovating something that is familiar. That's the general approach, and that's what I want to do with the melody as well. It should ring true - you should like every melody sequence without knowing what's happening next. "

" The assumption is simply that I hit on all the things I've hit on so far by accident, that my talent is just this raw thing that pours out of me, and then white people feel like they have to come in and contain it, refine it, and bring it to the place where it can been released. "

" No one is making extraordinary things alone. They might be alone in their bedroom while they're recording or writing, but they didn't actually conjure that thing out of nothing - without influence - without assistance - without anything. "

" I don't care about the underground, even if that's where I'm currently residing sonically. "

" Growing up in an Ethiopian household allowed me to feel like I had an audience before I had an audience. "

Kelela

Feel

Growing Up

" I would say Tracy Chapman was the first time I obsessed over an entire record. I knew every song; I knew the exact amount of seconds between each song. That's the level of obsession that I had. "

" I really do like Solange, sincerely. I'm down for her, and I trust her judgment. "

" I want to speak in the tradition of rhythm and blues and soul music, but also push how it's dressed and how it's delivered to the audience. And hopefully that gets embraced by as many people as possible, but the goal isn't necessarily to speak to everyone. The goal is to get it out as exact as it is in my head. "

" At the end of the day, I would like to have the farthest reach in terms of being able to communicate to as many people as possible. So it's not that I enjoy being obscure; it's that I sonically don't want to be situated here or there. "

" It is very rare that I am just coming up with melodies off the top of my head. I usually am responding to something - it could be chains dragging on the floor - but I am usually responding to something. "

" As a black person on the outside, because there's so much black art and so much of black people's work circulating, so many people imitating what black people do, you would think that there'd be more black people on the business side. It didn't cross my mind that every label head, for the most part, is a white guy. "

" There's definitely a push and a pull to 'legitimize' electronic music live by playing the same way that a band would play. "

" You can never have enough reinforcements, resources for black women to thrive in the world. The topic has been addressed a million times before, but it will never end because what we're up against keeps morphing, and we have to figure out how to beat it. "

" A lot of people of color in the music industry are still more interested in embracing things that are considered white canon, and looking radical. Like when people point to punk in the indie world: If you point to the history of punk as what you see as your legacy, that's more prized and praised. "

" I know deep down I'm a star. "

" When I started making songs, some of them read as mixtape-y, and some of them read as album-y. "

" In the music industry, you can't create success without having to engage a white man. It's just not possible. Whether it's executives, A&Rs, and the people that hold the key to your paper, inevitably, you'll be met with whiteness. "

" The whole thing about 'progressive R&B' blows my mind. Black music has always been progressive. "

" 'Take Me Apart' doesn't feel cohesive in a singular way but in a varied way. You can fixate on individual songs, and there are references from all over the place: Anita Baker to Bjork. I wanted to show all the facets of myself. "

Kelela

You

Way

" Often, I write to feel better and to heal - to cope with things that I'm dealing with. I'm either writing to get out of a feeling or to get into the feeling, to feel it more. Usually it's the perfect remedy, but if it isn't, I focus on other parts of what I'm making that don't involve writing. If neither are working, I simply forfeit the day. "

" Most artists are going into the studio for a fixed period of time, and they say that's their album. I can't relate, because I've never made music in that way. I come from a culture of editing and remixing. "