You need the past as a guideline. The history of music is a good basis, but to escape that stuff, that tortuous rulebook, you have to learn it first. It's kind of like religion - once you've written the Bible, that's it, move on.
Children go with whatever makes them feel good - like if that's the color green or orange, they do that with their clothes. As I've grown older, everything reversed. My music, my personality - onstage those things became my colors.
Sound quality was supposed to be one of the big selling points for CDs but, as we know, it wasn't very good at all. It was just another con, a get-rich-quick scheme, a monumental hoax perpetrated on the music consuming public.
I always wrote music for my friends, but my focus was on playing piano. I didn't think I'd be quite good enough to be a soloist, but I believed that if I worked hard enough, I could work as a player, a teacher.
When I started music, I think it was responsible for keeping me sane, because training as a dancer really kept me in good spirits amid all the crazy stuff that happened when I first became popular.
I ended up doing these other diverse things, but King Tuff is the thing I always wanted to come back to - just good, straightforward rock n' roll. That music is the most me, you know?
This sounds geeky, but when I run, I like to listen to musicals like 'Les Miserables.' The soundtracks are 75 minutes or longer, and I keep going until the story ends, so it feels like a good workout.
I want my music to jump off the stage and out of the speakers. When we do 'Rain Is A Good Thing' paired back to back with 'Country Girl,' it just feels like the roof is fixin' to come off the place.
I try to be a good representative for country music. But as a country artist, it's important to move the needle and make a difference beyond your core audience. But you can't ever strategically try to accomplish that; then things get weird.
I just try to do as good job with the material as I can and play some jazz as well, some improvised music, and do that every night. Just see where it goes.
Music is where my love is. I don't think the acting thing is going to start outweighing that, but I think it's going to start being a good chunk of something I want to do.
A fantastic actor in a scene that's just closed off will be good. But when working with a director who knows little tricks - correct music, slowly pushing in - that stunning performance will somehow become even better. I've always seen it as a symbio...
There is no kind of music I don't listen to. Everything good is interesting. I am as happy with a Bach fugue as I am with a record by Thelonious Monk.
Ideals are not something I can control. It's not logic that convinces me of something, it's what my heart says. My heart has a way of involving me in things, which can only be good for the music.
We love a good, hyped sound, but when it starts to sound insincere, that's when I lose interest. I hope that our music, even if it sounds polished, doesn't sound insincere.
You know, I'm the 1st black solo MC from Detroit. I didn't do the 50 Cent sales but hey... I got a long career, I'm still young and I'm trying to bring really good music.
So I'm writing more highly personalized and intellectual music, and I think that's good. It might take longer to find me, but I think that niche is perhaps underserved, so I'm going to serve that.
I think I always had a musicality, and I think I could tell a good song from a bad song. And I would appreciate hearing something that was new to me.
One of the things I wonder is whether it's good that the whole free model makes a lot of people listen to more of your music. I'm wondering if it devalues it, it becomes disposable, because you can get it so easily.
If people stop being interested, it's because you haven't written a good enough album. Music will always be the most powerful thing. It doesn't matter what record labels or journalists say. It's the song.
Although I don't come from a musical background, I was given piano lessons along with my sisters, but I wasn't what you would call a good student. I tended to write songs rather than do scales.
