The only thing that I miss lately in all music is somebody that will put out a melody that you can whistle. It doesn't seem like there's anything happening like that.
Elliott Carter does not write the kind of music that the kids go off to school whistling.
If the pressure is getting to you, whistle. In a barely audible way. It's the best way I know of to let go of tension. Music gets your mind off the situation, and the act of whistling melts the tension out of your body.
In the music industry, you can't create success without having to engage a white man. It's just not possible. Whether it's executives, A&Rs, and the people that hold the key to your paper, inevitably, you'll be met with whiteness.
I love being in a room in front of an audience who cares about the music, who knows the music, and who has lived with the music. It's kind of like an experience you share. I'm on stage performing it, but they're singing the words, too.
That's why people listen to music or look at paintings. To get in touch with that wholeness.
I decided right away that whomever was going to advise me had to be fundamentally interested in music. This protected me from the skullduggery common to the music industry then and that still exists today. Of course, using this method meant that some things we didn't know and just had to learn how to do it together.
I live a super-healthy lifestyle not because it's sensible or that I'm contrite, but because I need to keep my focus on the music I'm making. To do that, I need to be wide awake.
It's true that I have a wide range of interests. I like to write and paint and make music and go walking on my own and garden. In fact, gardening is probably what I enjoy doing more than anything else.
I think music is a big, big wide world, and I am voyager on this particular ship in this sea of wild music, and I'm gonna dive in and find as many fish as I can and catch them all. I love music.
My more risky or avant garde music is not that well known to a wider audience, but I wish it was.
The U.K. is one of the places that has always been an advocate of my music and I spend a lot of time touring here. I've got family and friends over here, but more than that, there's a large Jamaican community and the Jamaican culture is very widespread in the U.K. which I love.
The Beatles are the classical music of rock n' roll. And rock n' roll is far more widespread than classical will ever be.
I'm very pro presenting the best music I can to the widest audience possible.
When the OutKast sound changed and I started producing my own records, I would mirror what I thought that character doing that music would look like. As the sound got a little wilder, freakier and funkier, so did the clothes. Then when the sound got more sophisticated, the clothes changed again.
I didn't really see the British punk movement, if that's what it was, as wildly original, because I had been listening so intently to all the New York music since 1973, really.
I do a lot of collaborations and productions, whether it's Switch or Steve Aoki or No ID or Will Smith or No Doubt - I always like to collaborate and be a quality control person for the people 'cause I have my own taste in music and bring that to other peoples' brands and help them learn a little bit.
I really look up to Will Smith. He's internationally known, and people know him from everything. I don't know any kid who hasn't seen and liked Fresh Prince, or you'll like one of his movies or his music. He's perfect, and he's done everything. That's my dream: to be internationally known.
Poetry itself is music. I'm just lucky that I can convert it into music. William Blake is my favorite poet of all time, and he said that he wasn't quite familiar with the sounds of music. If so, he would have been a musician. All of his poems are all like songs, and that's how I always try to start my thoughts.
I grew up with the Highwaymen, which was Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson. Mom and Dad rode rodeo, so country music was always in the house and the car. They threw in some Dolly Parton, too.
