Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Labels are curators of taste, and the best ones know how to monetize what an artist is trying to do.
That dark humor has always been a part of what I've done. It's always been somewhat tongue-in-cheek.
Everyone just wants to feel good, and I don't think that all music is designed to make you feel good.
A good rapper is a good rapper, a good album is a good album. I don't think anyone is inherently good.
If you ask me what people want from me, they would probably just want me to be true to what I'm doing.
I don't think hip-hop is a dying art form. I think it's impossible for hip-hop to be a dying art form.
For me, the idea of releasing a free record is powerful if everybody gets it for free at the same time.
The thing about Steven Seagal is that he clearly wants to be a great person, but he just doesn't know how.
You don't know what it feels like to have someone go to bat for you until you really need it, and they do.
I always wanted to do a deal with Russell Simmons, and now I've got my signature on a piece of paper with his.
Hip-hop is always moving. It's always looking for the next style; it's always trying to one-up the last person.
A lot of people thought 'Funcrusher' was super dark and hopeless, and I don't think it was hopeless in any way.
The bravest artists I've ever known have always been graf artists. Risking your life and your freedom is no joke.
I'm a fan of some of the hyphy stuff. Hyphy has been going on a lot longer than the press has been recognizing it.
I don't believe in collaboration necessarily for collaboration's sake, but I will do it, and sometimes it's great.
If New York has just become a mall for the world, then what's the difference between being here and somewhere else?
Just when you think you should start accepting that you're becoming an adult, all your childhood fantasies come true.
There's something in the German language that makes you feel like you're getting a hug and a backstab at the same time.
I'm not trying to change the face of hip-hop music. I'm trying to make my records and always take the next step for me.
I just love Steven Seagal for his pure - his perspective on what being a hero is: just a purely evil, cruel perspective.
I'm a pretty intense person. And I don't know if intense is fun. I put myself through the wringer. That's just how I work.
Being stupid and compassionate are not conflicts. Being mean and being funny and having something to say are not a conflict.
Most people aren't happy about being consistent and staying at the same place for years. People want forward progress and motion.
Music can feel empowering, or it can give a natural emotional voice to something people can't express. This is why it's beautiful.
I've fallen on my face. I've made mistakes. I've got plenty of records where I listen back, and I think, 'I wouldn't've done that.'
Run The Jewels, me and Mike, and our connection and everything, came out of a period of time where I had personally lost everything.
I remember one day sitting in the mirror with a saxophone, just looking at myself, being like, 'I can't do this; this is ridiculous.'
The fact of the matter is, if you're not putting out stuff that people are feeling, then your record label doesn't mean a goddamn thing.
I just like heavy music in general - from heavy rock and heavy metal and heavy rap and heavy everything. I've always been attracted to it.
A lot of the attitude I used to have about being from New York when I was younger just disappeared when I started to the rest of the world.
All I ever wanted to do, personally, was bring something new to what I loved: the thing that I loved the most, the music that I loved the most.
Some of the music I made for 'Fantastic Damage' I thought I was making for the Company Flow album, but the majority of it was post-Company Flow.
Run the Jewels, our role is this: We can provide some music and some swagger in the face of doom and in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.
My love of Seagal is ridiculous. Like, I love this man. I love how ridiculous he is. I mean, he made an album called 'Songs From The Crystal Cave.'
I would feel pretty embarrassed if I was doing what I do and I wasn't at least attempting the eloquent translation of the human experience in some way.
My New York, the one I identify with as a kid, has greatly changed. And I'm sure the people who were adults when I was a kid probably felt the same way.
I work on a musician's week, so Monday is Friday. By the time Thursday rolls around, you stay in, and you work, and you don't go out because it's horrible.
I think you get to a certain point in your life and where you grew up stops reminding you of when you grew up. Everything changes, everything metamorphosizes.
If you live in a crowded area of Brooklyn or Manhattan, having a car is a hindrance. It doesn't even make sense. I basically grew up all my life without a car.
The thing I love about music is, if you do it long enough, you get better and better at translating what's in your head to a medium. That's why I keep doing it.
There's nothing worse than being shackled by some miniscule sort of technology you have onstage, and I think your mettle is going to get tested in those moments.
Maybe my great struggle, and it's probably not anything different from too many other people, but it certainly is what drives the music, is a hugely internal one.
I'm not a 'dystopian, futuristic master': I'm a schnook walking the street. It's an insane reality we're living in, and I'm just trying to translate it for myself.
I always liked the idea that you can put something in you onto a canvas or a piece of paper and have it exist there and not inside you. It's a way to control things.
I'm of the generation that discovered Aerosmith because of Run-DMC. They just looked crazy to me. They were the dudes in the Run-DMC video. That's who Aerosmith was.
The emergence of the independent hip-hop scene has replaced what we called the "underground scene". It's what the underground scene has evolved into: actual businesses.
'Meow The Jewels' was a nightmare of a promise I had to fulfill. We made a joke that if the fans gave us $40,000, we would remix our album using nothing but cat sounds.
I like being a rapper and cursing and getting paid. But at some point I feel like I'm going to be an old angry ass man, who is going to run the school board or city council.
If there's any credence to the guy who wrote 'Drones Over Blkyn' a year before drones were flying over Brooklyn, then listen to me: we're going to be in fascist police state.
I really only put stuff out when I have something to say and I feel like I've got a direction and I've got an idea - and that can even take two, two-and-a-half years to flesh out.