People underestimate the hip-hop audience and the capacity to understand politics when it's part of music.
My music is part of the quest I have to find new ways of telling stories, and also, I want to inspire people.
Today we are in a war against war - music is our power.
I have a desire that I want to make people feel happy through my music. I'm always trying to find optimistic ways to express myself.
The music industry has been hijacked by corporate interests, but the way music affects people and resonates with them hasn't changed.
In Jamaica, the music is recorded for the sound system, not the iPod. It's about experiencing music together, with other people.
Music gives us new energy and a stronger sense of purpose.
Music was a central part of my childhood because my mother played organ and piano in the church, and that meant all us kids had to be in the church choir.
Recording in Jamaica is like nothing else. The studios are always closed in America. But in Jamaica, the studio doors are wide open, and there's music blasting out in the street. You can see the reaction of people immediately.
My house was filled with music. We had a piano, and my brothers and sisters played instruments. Even though I was around it, I played basketball.
I came up playing in both punk rock bands and hip-hop bands, and I found a more universal way of reaching people, especially with music that has a message to it.
I'd play music on the street, especially in developing nations where a lot of kids couldn't wear shoes. In order to relate with kids that would be following me barefoot, I would take off my shoes, and they would all laugh at me because I couldn't go ...
As a kid, I was into music, played guitar in a band. Then I started acting in plays in junior high school and just got lost in the puzzle of acting, the magic of it. I think it was an escape for me.
Fleetwood Mac were really accessible musically, but lyrically and emotionally, we weren't so easy. And it was our music that helped us survive. But all of us were in pieces personally.
When I do the music, I make the musicians listen to what's happening in the film. That way they treat the dialogue as if it was a singer.
The power of sound to put an audience in a certain psychological state is vastly undervalued. And the more you know about music and harmony, the more you can do with that.
When I was a teenager, I began to settle into school because I'd discovered the extracurricular activities that interested me: music and theater.
Music is essentially built upon primitive memory structures.
Since music has never had a Rembrandt, we have remained nothing more than musicians.
I never feel that my music is sparse or minimalist; the way fat people never really think they're fat. I certainly don't consider myself minimalist at all.
Music is really all about experimentation and lots of trial and error. It's just mind-numbingly boring until you hit on something that works well.
