Art & Creativity Quote by Kenneth Edmonds

Kenneth Edmonds, better known as Babyface, slips a whole economics lesson into a sentence that sounds like studio small talk. “Commercial music” and “popular music” are often treated like rival camps: one cynical and calculated, the other authentic and of-the-people. He collapses that moral drama. For the most part, he argues, they are the same thing. And the phrase “you always have to keep that in mind” reads like advice to young artists tempted to pretend the marketplace doesn’t exist.

The intent is practical: if you’re making music meant to reach millions, the listener isn’t an abstract ideal; it’s a real audience with limited time, a radio dial (or a playlist skip button), and a hunger for hooks. Babyface’s own career gives the line its authority. He built a defining 90s sound by writing songs that felt intimate and personal while still engineered for mass repeatability. That’s the craft: making the “commercial” disappear into the “popular” so the product feels like desire.

The subtext is also a gentle demystification of taste. Popularity isn’t accidental; it’s shaped by labels, gatekeepers, formats, and now algorithms. Calling something “commercial” is often just a way of distancing yourself from what people actually like, or what you secretly want: attention. Babyface is reminding us that if you want wide cultural impact, you’re in the business of communication, not confession. The trick isn’t to reject commerce; it’s to make something that earns its audience without sounding like it was built in a boardroom.