You can be a rapper born and raised in go-go music, violence, drugs, crack, Reagonomics, and still, if you hear 'Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,' you're going to find a way to hum along. Guilty pleasures? It don't matter. Sue me - I like the song. To dance to it is another matter.
I've made my music so that it could be about anything and everybody - whether it's a guy, a female or a goat - and everybody can relate to that.
When I have sat at home with this God-given talent for music for a long time, somebody approaches me out of the blue and asks me to play for them. It's almost as though there's a force somewhere which is saying 'no sittin' around, out you go!
I'm not a goddess, for crying out loud. I'm a regular person who took feminism - which I have a deep connection to - and mixed it with music, which I really love to do.
It's a big thing in my music to highlight being human - being emotional and powerful, like a goddess.
If you want to see that human story unfold, if you want to understand that only the unexpected life is worth a damn, spend some time with 46 years of Lou Reed's work: music that leaped and then looked. Safety is for the godless and the faithless.
Balance is key. Balance is a virtue. Balance is next to godliness, maybe. We should all aspire to better balance. Too much of what is said in this world is one-sided, and we need more balance - in our speech, in our music, in our art, in everything.
Music is the same to me as it was to Goethe - a pleasant noise. I am an eye man, not an ear man.
He has Van Gogh's ear for music.
I think when I was about 12 or 13, my dad started taking me out to the local golf course, and that's the first time I ever hit a golf ball. I picked it up pretty quickly, just kind of monkey-see, monkey-do. But when I was 12, golf was so slow to me. For me, it was basketball, girls and music.
Elvis was a great guy. We'd just horse around together or go to see a movie. He drove me around Graceland in a golf cart. He was a fan of our music and was curious about how I sounded so black.
If my music career was my golf game, I'd be playing for about 26 people tonight somewhere.
Other guys like to go golfing, but music is my hobby.
I feel like everything I do in the hip-hop world has an influence. People don't really notice what I did until somebody else does it. As far as hip-hop goes, I want to continue to make good music, and good art. I don't really follow the state of hip-hop.
I think it's like music for the sake of music, and a lot of the words stem from liking music a lot, wanting to be a good band and having a good sense of humour, and living in a situation where we're free to pretty much do what we want.
Horns really make a good band. They always create excitement when it's needed. They give the music a broader spread. It doesn't have to be all guitars and keyboards all the time.
We never considered ourselves to be a good band or anything, we just thought we were playing for fun and we wanted to play music that sounded like Black Sabbath or Soundgarden or the music we were into at that time.
Anyway, it fell through because they ran out of money. That was when I learned not to waste your time getting your hopes up or to believe something until it actually happens. We broke up for various reasons, but it was a good band. Jim and Don produced some magical music.
A lot of the lessons that are taught in football will promote success in anything you get into after football; for me, it just happens to be music. Being disciplined. Good character. Trying to do the right thing, and working hard.
I think mostly music just felt good because my parents gave me a real good childhood so I was rarely sad.
