No matter where I'm at in life, whether I'm in the music industry, rich, poor, everybody need love in their life. Gangsta or not, everybody need love in their life. You can't act too hard about that.
A Boogie wit da Hoodien
I'm not really worried about the flashy stuff. I don't got chains and cars. I spend what I need to spend. It doesn't faze me.
I look at goals, like, what do I want to do and where do I want to see myself. What position to I want to be in going forward.
I don't wanna learn about more science and math. That's not why I'm going to college.
I want people to really recognize that this is what I am naturally good at: I'm really good at making music and describing your feelings vicariously through my experiences, through my past and my future. I want people to relate to me in multiple ways and be versatile in my music.
I'm not really rocking with mixtapes no more. EPs and albums - that's it.
Getting people to like my music was challenging at first. It's hard to get people to like your music. There isn't a simple formula that automatically makes people like you.
Hip-hop originated from the Bronx specifically; that means everything. I'm down the block from where hip-hop was born and raised, so I'm glad I am here and I'm able to represent New York the way I am.
Not everyone's really got the heart to talk about what's going on with their love in their music.
I used to record songs, like, play the beat from one phone and have another phone recording me and just rap. Moving from that to a studio was like, 'Damn, I never knew I could sound like this.' It was just magic.
I got so many people that have my number. It's crazy. I just don't feel like texting anybody back after I get, like, 30 text messages in three hours. I just be chilling.
New York sounds like something that I could really listen to. It's like a vibe; it's a hit song. It's a song that you could listen to in five years and still like.
A lot of people don't know that: that Artist is my name.
I never knew Artist was going to get this big. When I was making it, I put my all into it. But you never know what's going to happen with something you make.
I was trying to make my name just Artist in the beginning, but it was weird at first, because I wasn't an R&B singer or nothing. Not an R&B singer. I didn't do no melodic songs, none of that yet.
My first mixtape especially - that came from a heartbreak.
One day, walking through the Bronx streets, I just realized that people were stopping me, taking pictures, and noticing me from across the street. I can't even use public transportation anymore, so I kind of stopped going places and started going straight to the studio, going home, and telling people I can't go anywhere anymore.
You always gonna feel me. That's my main thing. When I'm speaking in my music, you gotta feel me.
2017 was crazy when I made the 'Freshman' cover 'cause I looked up to it, and I really wanted to be in it. It was motivation for me after that: I kept on going, and I grinded.
I started off throwing out 'Artist.' I made that my first mixtape. Then, I threw out 'TBA,' which means 'To Be Announced.'
Some of my songs are turnt up, but that's just 'cause I have to make 'em like that so the clubs can play them.
Me and Tory Lanez got good chemistry together. We could make a song so easy, but we always like to figure out what we're really doing. We can make a good song, but it gotta make sense.
I pick and choose what I want to put on what. Instead of just dropping a single, I like putting projects together.
Even though I can't dance, that's, like, the one thing I wished I could do growing up. I used act like I was MJ, doing the moonwalk, tip toes, leg kick, all that.
I found my sound through exploring. I was in the studio yelling, going low, trying things, and that's how I found that I have a lot of sounds.
I had to realize that you can't try to get money, support yourself, and grind doing whatchu need to do at the same time. The music is the grind. You really gotta grind. You gotta find your way around. You can't be stuck tryna get there.
London is a city of ghosts; you feel them here. Not just of people, but eras. The ghost of empire, or the blitz, the plague, the smoky ghost of the Great Fire that gave us Christopher Wren's churches and ushered in the Georgian city.
I generally only eat one meal a day, which is pretty unusual for a restaurant reviewer. It's not that I have a problem with food; I'll eat anything that doesn't involve a bet, a dare, or an initiation ceremony.
People collect boredom, they hoard it, they wallow in it, hoping that one day it'll be of interest and become an effete ennui. Let me tell you, it doesn't.
Penicillin and plastic bags help a lot, fridges and hot water make manliness more comfortable and Tom Ford's fragrance range makes it smell better, but the idea that has pushed our lives into the light more than any other -ism or -ology is feminism.
Nature gave you your look and there's only a limited amount you can do about that, but what you wear is the skin you choose for yourself.
Really, I like the future. I appreciate my automatic alarm-call necklace in case I get lost and confused in a mall. I appreciate the watch that tells the hospital my blood pressure's gone ballistic. I like my computer, just as long as it doesn't get ideas above its workstation.
Personal adornment is the only cultural form that everybody in the world takes part in.
We have to thank the members of the Romantic movement for the sober colours of suits. It was their love of the Gothic that put us in grey and black but the suit stuck.
Every man imagines that he will turn his suit like a double agent, that it can be twisted to his will with irony or comedy, that the man can undermine its origins.
Being able to afford everything you desire is not, by any means, the worst thing that can happen to you. But, depressingly, and more profoundly, neither is it the best.
Have you noticed that almost all the change in the world goes to women? When was the last time you had a five pence piece? Exactly. In a Christmas pudding. All the rest of it is in women's handbags.
You see, the problem with Dave Cameron is that people know who he is. The less people know about him, the more he's likely to get re-elected.
The part that makes you unique is the bit people will like or fear, fall in love with, or try to avoid.
The pleasure in lovers' gifts is that they are often covert and secretive, worn next to the skin, hidden under pillows.
The one thing politicians will always vote for is more politics, so in 2000 they invented the post of mayor of London without ever really thinking what it was a mayor would do.
The truth is a mayor can actually do very little to alter the course of a huge city run by the free market that is home to banking - the engine room of capitalism.
Margaret Thatcher was as viscerally hated at home as she was warmly respected abroad.
I don't know if English is the only language where some expressions only and solely mean the opposite of what they say but we do have an awful lot of them.
Cowboy boots you can't wear unless you actually are a cowboy or in a Status Quo tribute band, or over 60; there's something about a retiring gent in cowboy boots that looks sort of presidential.
Hate numbs the judgment, paralyzes the vitals of democracy.
There's no pleasing the British, or winning their favor. They simply hate politicians. All politicians. Hatred goes with politicians like mint sauce with lamb. It's as old as Parliaments.
The problem with a man bag is that it's called a man bag.
The London police have discovered that the best way to neuter demonstrations is not to move everyone on, or disperse troublemakers, but hold them close, cordon them into a diminishing space for hours and hours, as a sort of arbitrary al fresco arrest.
When you look at traditions closely, examine what they really are, you realize they're made up of layers and layers of deferrals, delays, indecisions, tomorrows and long lunches.