Creativity Quote by Brenda Holloway

“I feel Motown really exploited me” lands like a quiet indictment from someone who helped build an empire and didn’t get to keep the bricks. Brenda Holloway isn’t grandstanding here; the power is in the understatement. “I feel” signals a truth she’s learned to phrase carefully, the kind artists often adopt when speaking about institutions that still control the narrative, the catalog, the mythology. It’s not just a complaint about money. It’s a statement about leverage.

Motown sold itself as a dream factory: sharp suits, crossover polish, a Black-owned powerhouse that outplayed a segregated industry on its own turf. That story is real, but it has a shadow version: tight contracts, controlled output, and a corporate paternalism that treated talent as both family and inventory. Holloway’s career sits in that tension. She had undeniable voice, records that could hit, and a label machine famous for shaping sound and image with ruthless efficiency. When you’re in a system that can shelve your singles, dictate your repertoire, and decide when you’re “ready,” exploitation isn’t only underpayment; it’s being edited out of your own momentum.

The line also speaks to how Motown’s brand of excellence could blur into disposability. The assembly-line brilliance that made stars also created casualties - artists rotated out when the next sound, the next face, the next market strategy arrived. Holloway’s phrasing is retrospective, almost weary: not “they exploited me,” but “I feel” - a verdict delivered after years of watching the legend calcify while the personal cost stayed oddly unaccounted for.