You don't necessarily pick the singles that you want when you're making a record, but for the most part it's the same process. You're the artist - you make the music that you want to make.
I come from a place, with all due respect, who's never had a music star in hip-hop. So the odds is already against me.
I didn't have a philosophical understanding of music until I came to New York. I didn't understand how it applied to my kind and my generation. I thought it was just old people talking.
The majority of the high schools and the public schools in N.Y.C. don't even have band programs. Hip-hop in a lot of ways is an outgrowth of a lack of instruments and a desire to play music, so we can't really fault the kids for that.
My music is very innovative, in a class by itself. Nobody else is saying anything of value. What I'm trying to do is get people to think, to alter their consciousness. It's not your typical platinum formula for success.
I listened, motionless and still; And, as I mounted up the hill, The music in my heart I bore, Long after it was heard no more.
It's easy for me to care about Toronto, because Toronto is a community that cares about itself. It represents the world. It talks to itself, and because it does, it figures out that there must be a music garden as part of its existence.
My big influences are Joni Mitchell, and a lot of classical and Indian music, as well as Nina Simone and the personal blues and jazz of Billie Holiday. Other influences for me include Bjork, Nick Drake, and Sufjan Stevens.
Hebrew is my first language, so it's really the most personal and the most simple. When I write in Hebrew, I don't look for sophistication in music; it's just pure emotion that comes out.
My first album was full of ideas and attempts to go in all kinds of directions. I was young. I loved making music, but I didn't have a clear path. I also lacked in confidence.
I think that Sufism fits all over the world. The concept is not anything that fits standard Western ideas - it's always related to culture, to music, to religion. It is a dominant religion in Senegal.
I rented a house, recorded the stuff in a house. Just took my time 'cuz sometimes it's just rush, rush, rush. I just wanna live and play music.
Everything, I just wanted to be like my father. And, as I grew within the music, I kind of became myself which was even more like my father, only without me trying though.
Even if I wasn't in music, even if my father was a carpenter, some guy in Jamaica would go 'You're just like Bob. You're just like your father.' That happens in Jamaica all the time.
'Watchmen' is like the music you feel is written just for you. 'That's my song, no one else gets that but me.' That's why the fan base is so rabid, because they feel personal about it.
'Punk rock' is a word used by dilettantes and heartless manipulators about music that takes up the energies, the bodies, the hearts, the souls, the time and the minds of young men who give everything they have to it.
Usually, whenever my mom would come over I would try and put on music that I thought she would like just to make her feel more at ease.
It's true that my mom loved it when I played Joanie Cunningham in the musical 'Happy Days,' but I think she finally realized I am never going to do 'Oklahoma!'
I saw my first Broadway show when I was 10 years old. I saw 'Big: The Musical' and I remember going out to dinner with my mom afterward and reading the souvenir program like crazy!
No press, no television. If my mom calls and says, 'Did you hear about?' I don't want to know nothing about anything that is going on in relation to music. I shut it all off.
I come from a short fiction background, and my mom is a poet, so I've always read poetry; I've always had a lot of different influences both linguistically and musically.
