I had no intention of becoming a performer, and yet under miraculous circumstances I was brought into the music industry fold. If divine powers hadn't intervened, I'd still be living in China working in some area of Sino-American comparative law.
I initially wanted to work in the music industry more on the A&R side. While I was in school, I began working in the New Business department of an advertising firm, and very quickly I was responsible for roughly 70% of their business, so you could say I had a natural knack for the advertising world.
I think the difficult thing is the transition between TV competition series and going into the actual music industry. There still seems to be a slight disconnect there.
I think where it's going is toward what the music industry is like, where channels will be considered more like labels that carry the type of TV show that you like, and then you'll consume them however you can. For example, I don't really watch Showtime, but I bought 'Homeland,' and I've been watching every episode on my iPad.
I have been working and composing music since 1986. Over the years, I have seen our music industry go through all kinds of transformation.
It's not just the 'Grammys' that I've pulled out of. I also pulled out of the English awards as well. The reason that I wanted to pull out was because I believe very much that the music industry as a whole is mainly concerned with material success.
There's always been extreme misogyny in the music industry.
Dad's fear, especially when I was 18, was that, in the music industry in the U.K., there wasn't really anybody I would aspire to who was of black origin and who was successful. It was mainly black American musicians in the charts and, at that age, I think you look for someone you can identify with, and there wasn't really anyone.
I'm just glad that there's some diversity in the music industry with women so people know that you can be literally anything and still be able to make it.
To be in the music industry, to be in any kind of entertainment industry, you really, really have to be passionate about it and love it and persevere, because if that passion isn't there, it's easy to give up. If you really want it, the ambition is there, it'll come. It's definitely harder work than some people think.
