On his induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame:
“It’s the highest honor you can get as a songwriter. I’ve been doing it since I was 8 years old; I would send them to Warner Bros. Records! It’s full circle. The Hall of Fame felt like it was just off-limits. I never even thought about actually being able to enter it. Now to see me, Missy Elliott and Jermaine Dupri in the Hall of Fame, it’s just surreal.”
On Atlanta:
“Atlanta means everything to me. From the time I started here with Another Bad Creation, we created our own lane. A lot of people wouldn’t accept us outside of Atlanta. It was all New York and California. We just went home and kept digging into our souls and into what we do as creative people. It was Another Bad Creation, then Kris Kross, then TLC, then OutKast...”
On 2019:
“There’s the Songwriters Hall of Fame induction this summer, and I’m also working on some special projects, some with Jermaine, for Atlanta. I’ve also been working with Klondike Blonde, who’s on L.A. Reid’s Hitco Entertainment, which is kind of full circle from LaFace Records; we were doing things with L.A. Reid when he came to Atlanta.”
On the movie industry:
“When I was filming ATL, Warner Bros. wanted to send me to New Orleans to film. I said, ‘You can’t film an Atlanta skating rink movie in New Orleans! All my people are here.’ So I ended up taking this bill from Louisiana and bringing it back to Georgia, saying we needed to do something like this here. Sonny Perdue and I actually cut the ribbon together to celebrate the first tax bill, and now Atlanta’s the Hollywood of the South. I also helped start the Georgia Entertainment Caucus.”
On the music industry:
“I’m looking to do the same thing for music, not to let them separate film and music because it’s all one entertainment group we’ve created. It’s really about making sure our entertainment district is branded the way Nashville has branded, the way Hollywood has branded these studios. We want to hone in on how important this is for the entertainment community that we’ve built, and control it and access it and make it better. That’s my big goal.”
