I’ve done well, I’ve been disappointed, and I think it all goes back to you. Of course the labels are going to be the labels. It’s the music business. You are a business. That’s what they do. So you’ve got to protect yourself.

Believe in yourself when nobody else does.

That's the message I want to give to every up-and-coming artist: Do everything that is going to help you later. If you clone somebody else, that's all they're gonna keep wanting from you.

It hurts a lot when you cannot really comprehend what a person is saying in a meeting, or you don't even understand what you're reading in your contract.

No one compares to you. Just remember that. There's no one out there - there's only one of you, and that's it. And whatever you believe about you that's great, no one else has it. And I can't look like you, there's no way I can slip into your body and be you, and you can't slip into my body and be me. This is all we're gonna get.

No one intimidates me because I'm not trying to do what you do, because I can't do what you do. I can only do what Mary J. Blige can do, so that relaxes me right there, and it gets me out of the competition and that whole thing.

Once you climb to another level, you have to figure out how to sustain it.