I fell into lyric writing because of music. I backed into it.
I like myself still kind of being... because DJs used to be the background guy - the guy who was just doing the music - I see myself more as that guy than being on the stage.
I really want to do the unexpected, and I think that's what I did when I executed 'Long.Live.A$AP.' I wanted people to really see the message and that I'm an artist who not only has the capability of rapping, but of composing great music both for people of my generation and for people with different backgrounds.
Every day I lugged my backpack through the halls, waiting for the final bell. Then I'd race home and hole up in my room, playing the drums and the piano, composing music.
Backstreet has been around a long time. Normally, groups like us have a shelf life of two to four years. We always wanted to have a long stay in the music world.
I listen to a lot of Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, Britney Spears - the songs just stick in your head and that's what I want to achieve with my music.
I started studying business and finance in Edinburgh as a backup plan. I was still making music many hours a day, and when I was at university, the electronic music boom started really taking off globally.
When we went to see the first rough cuts of 'Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence,' I fell to the floor because my acting was so bad. I wrote music to compensate for my bad acting.
My core is grime. But I make all kinds of music. Take Picasso. He could paint whatever way he liked. He could do a little ting with a felt tip if he wanted to - it's still going to be a bad boy Picasso at the end.
I grew up listening to a lot of 2Pac and a lot of East Coast, West Coast rap; Bad Boy, Lil Kim, Foxy Brown, Biggie, 2Pac. Super hip-hop, super listening to that raw era of music.
I'm kind of a good girl - and I'm not. I'm a good girl because I really believe in love, integrity, and respect. I'm a bad girl because I like to tease. I know that I have sex appeal in my deck of cards. But I like to get people thinking. That's what the stories in my music do.
The business side of film has goofed up so many things, but even that's changing. It happened to the music industry and now it's happening to the film studios. It's crazy what's going on. But artists should have control of their work; especially if, as I always say, you never turn down a good idea and never take a bad idea.
Going to college and studying music is not a bad idea at all. I don't know if you can go to college and be taught heart.
Nothing unifies people more than music, more than that universal riff. The one thing that unifies us and the hope that we can have, especially being an artist, is that we can create music that can build bridges and smash down very bad ideas.
I believe there are certain things that God uses to get us out of a bad situation, and I believe music was one of the things he used for me.
I've started doing book reviews for Barnes & Noble! They saw that I did a lot of book reviews on the site, and they figured that it might not be a bad thing if they got me to do some for them as well. I gave them five categories I'd be interested in reviewing, from art to fiction to music.
I hate that people have made the term SoundCloud rapper into a bad thing, because a lot of artists are underground and they don't have a way to put their music on. But to get that clout, to get that popularity, you might want to upload your music to SoundCloud - because how else is everybody going to hear it?
I think as far as the music industry is concerned, it's kind of been the wild, wild West in a way with the Internet, which is not necessarily a bad thing to me.
If you talk bad about country music, it's like saying bad things about my momma. Them's fightin' words.
The music industry is in such poor shape; it's in a really bad way, and a lot of people in the industry are very depressed.
