Hip-hop is a part of rock & roll because it comes from DJ culture. DJ culture is the embodiment of all genres and all recorded music, if you actually pay attention to it.
The bass, no matter what kind of music you're playing, it just enhances the sound and makes everything sound more beautiful and full. When the bass stops, the bottom kind of drops out of everything.
I'm not a very spiritual guy when it comes to music. I remember hearing Carlos Santana say that angels helped him write his songs. And I thought, 'Really, angels?'
Songs used to be short, then they became longer, and now they're getting shorter. But otherwise, music is about a beat and a message. If the beat gets to the audience, and the message touches them, you've got a hit.
I think Andy Kaufman is to comedy what the Velvet Underground was to music - it's like, 80 thousand records sold, but everybody who bought one started a band.
I don't care much about politics. That kind of witchcraft I stay away from because people end up dead. I'd rather die for music.
It's dangerous to buy into praise and criticism for what you do when you're trying to present your music to people. I don't ignore it completely, but I don't dwell on it too much.
I've given up trying to understand what people think about me. It seems like a lot of people don't like the music we make and don't know me, or something.
My music is how I feel, and that's changed from being twenty years old to being forty-three years old.
I could read music and sing all the right notes at the right time. And over time, I literally found my voice, found a way to make sound.
I've spent a lot of time playing Bach partitas. One of my first jobs was to play for ballet and modern classes, so the music in 'Partita' is kind of like choreography for me.
When you here a conjunto and you hear another conjunto, you think it's like a continuation of the first. It's all the same, same, same. There's no variety, just the same music.
There are two things that I cannot live without: music and books. Caffeine isn't dignified enough to qualify.
Being 16 years old and getting an electric guitar is never going to get old. There's always going to be kids making music. There's always going to be kids in bands.
That is what I did with Jack, and that's why he liked to do the readings with me because he knew I was there for him, and for our ability to blend the poetry and the music.
Do you think Duke Ellington didn't listen to Debussy? Louis Armstrong loved opera, did you know that? Name me a jazz pianist who wasn't influenced by European music!
Napster's only alleged liability is for contributory or vicarious infringement. So when Napster's users engage in noncommercial sharing of music, is that activity copyright infringement? No.
I had to resign myself, many years ago, that I'm not too articulate when it comes to explaining how I feel about things. But my music does it for me, it really does.
I can take any series of numbers and turn it into music, from Bach to bebop, Herbie Hancock to hip-hop.
My relationship with Music Row has always been, from my end, optimistic and hopeful that there is more than one way to approach the writing, recording, and marketing of an album.
One motivation for the 'Soul Train' awards was the grumbling that all of us in the industry have heard about the way black music tends to be viewed as a secondary phenomenon by the other awards shows.
