[Peter Paterno - Advice for Musicians]

First of all it's a very bad time to try to get into the music business. Now we’re over that, you decide you want to do it. to me the most important thing to me is always been and I've seen in any artist that I worked with that’s gone and be successful and it's just what I've been talking about. Is that you really need to make music for the sake of making music. If you're talented it will connect with the public at large, if you're not you’ll be pumping gas. The fact of the matter is, if you try to figure out what’s going to make the public happy, I can promise you you’ll be pumping gas. If you're not doing it from a set of values and doing it from the heart, it's really, really hard to be successful. You have to really believe in what you're doing and try to do it on a level where it's a passion for you and a statement that you want to make as an artist.

It sounds - there's various kinds of artists out there. If you're a Hip Hop guy, you're best thing you can do is go figure out how to get to JZ or Puffy or Drey or Little John and get on one of their records. That’s the best thing you can do is get on one of their records and then blow up off of one of their records. If you're a Rock band, the best thing I think you can do is go out there and just keep doing it. Don’t look for the shortcut. Don’t look for the, “Oh, I'm going to get this guy to shop me.” or whatever. Just go out and play for as many people as you can and keep writing as much as you can and keep recording as much as you can. Like I said, if you have talent you will ultimately connect. If you are driven and you work hard and you're talented. If you're not, well, you know what? I can't play shortstop for the Dodgers. I'm not good enough. I’d like to, but I'm not good enough. So you just keep doing what you do and if you're talented and you work hard it will probably pay off. And if you're not, it won't.