I'm truly passionate about basketball. I'm not as passionate about baseball as I am about basketball, but I watch baseball and I watch football. I love sports in general.
I'll sing as long as I can because I enjoy doing that. I enjoy the fans and what I do. I love the traveling and the hotels and just seeing the world over and over again.
I loved the movies and I wanted to be like Marilyn Monroe. I thought she was so glamorous and everyone seemed to love her. I wanted to be like that and I told everyone I would be the next Marilyn Monroe.
I can play punk rock, and I love playing punk rock, but I was into every other style of music before I played punk rock.
I like challenging parts, something I haven't done yet, something that scares me. There's just a feeling I get when I read a script that I love, I feel an attachment to it, a yearning to play that character.
I was clear that I wanted to do music and I wanted to write songs. But I wasn't clear about how I was going to make that happen. I wrote loads of songs but didn't want to show them to anyone.
I do not have voice for Russian music; I cannot be cute little peasant like in operas of Glinka or Rimsky-Korsakov. I am now never in Russia; I am Austrian citizen. But definitely I am Latin!
I realised that the only time I really enjoyed music was when I was in the studio writing. So even though it was a six album deal, they saw quite early on that I wasn't enjoying it as I should be. I didn't feel there was anything behind it.
I studied classical music for a year. Then, I studied jazz for a year at the New School, and then I got kicked out. You had to go to your class, so I don't know if that counts as studying. I didn't study jazz. I was supposed to.
I studied music; I studied theater. I went to school for it, so I kind of treat it in that manner, that whether or not I can hang out, I've always been the one to go in my room and chill.
I don't sing melodically. Rhyme pattern is how I sing. I also write like a lyricist or an MC because that's what I was before I was a singer. I just took those elements and put them into music.
Well when I was young, when I was very young, when I was a little boy I don't remember the music I heard, but there was an article in the Brooklyn Daily written by my Aunt about how I could choose phonograph records.
Once I got to be about twenty-five, I got interested in the music of the time. I started smokin' dope, I started drinking, I started slowing down and trying to find myself. I didn't want to work in nightclubs.
I always thought that one day I would be somebody. I would be successful in music, and I would have fans that cared about my music. At the same time, I really feel like an ordinary guy; I have been an ordinary guy forever.
I think older people can appreciate my music because I really show my heart when I sing, and it's not corny. I think I can grow as an artist, and my fans will grow with me.
One thing that I had to remember in my personal journey in the music industry and coming up in the music industry was how many times I was told no. I was signed, I was dropped, I was signed, and I was put on a shelf.
I use the NordicTrack every other day for 20 minutes. I don't listen to music or watch TV while I do it. I count to myself. I count to 25; I count to 25 backwards, that sort of thing.
I don't know if I would qualify as mainstream. I think I have managed to function pretty successfully on the fringes of the music world and have been able to play exactly what I have wanted the way I have wanted.
I've been wanting to go into music ever since I can remember. I mean even before I became an actor. I just thought it would be a tough field to break into, so I became an actor instead.
I don't think I thought I was going to go into music, and I don't think it hit me until I was 13 or 14, and then I was gone. Just like that. At that point, there was nothing else that could keep my attention.
I was never really a DJ... I just kinda figured it all out at once as I started to tour. I was making music and producing and I just had to start to DJ as I got more into touring.