Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I wasn't trying to make a following. I was just trying to make interesting music. That's not being modest, that's just being realistic.
I've been dedicating my life to doing remixes and sample based music. Whether you're into it or not I'm going to continue to pump it out.
Anytime there is any lyrical meaning or combination in my mixes, it's very blatant. I'm not trying to make any statement or anything like that.
My music should fall under fair use because it's transformative, it's becoming its own entity, and it's not negatively impacting anyone's sales.
With rap music, there are billions and billions of samples that are uncleared that people have never been bothered about on an underground level.
I make a living off of playing shows; the albums only make me a fraction of what I make off of shows, especially since I'm doing around 100 shows a year.
The music is in no way politically based - I'm not trying to make a point about sampling. It may bring up issues but I'm not trying to push it on anyone.
KRS-One is one of my favorite rappers ever. I actually don't even know why I have this on my computer, but I do. I really like this album, Criminal Minded.
That's something I've always been down with: creative commons and people being able to license their music and allow other people to reuse it and recycle it.
When you're playing for 30 people and you're jumping around stage, screaming, getting in peoples faces and acting cocky you're kind of poking fun at yourself.
I didn't change much in terms of my setup or how I was making my music. It's evolved to this point where I think people look at it as one big traveling party.
When someone is buying a sample-based album, they are investing in the concept of that album. If they really like the original source material, they can go buy it.
Something that distinguishes my solo work from normal rap production is that it has a lot of melody - it's not just cutting up a song and having someone rap over it.
I always like to borrow bits and pieces of things. There's a line between jumping on something that's happening and incorporating bits and pieces of it into my work.
I typically get around to most major cities at least once a year. I think people see that as their chance to go nuts for the year if they're into the style of music.
A lot of times people have issues with me because they don't understand where I'm coming from and haven't seen the years and years of hard work and shows I've played.
Fair use is a part of United States copyright law. You don't know if it falls under fair use until you go to court. Someone has to sue you and then you have to challenge it.
I think we're approaching an era where there's a consistent dialogue going on between artists and consumers. And I think that's going to be part of the solution to actually selling music.
I'm most excited about going swimming and riding water slides, shooting off fireworks, and playing basketball, and things like that. That's what I really love doing. Summer is a great time.
I want to make new and interesting music out of pop music in a way that isn't ironic. I want to stay sincere to the source material but at the same time manipulate it and take it to a new world.
I think collaborating with a DJ could be interesting musically and it's something that I'd like to get into down the road, but I think on the live show tip I'm sticking to my guns for right now.
I'll put out an album, and people review it, and some people love it, and some people tear it apart. By nature of the project, I've always wanted this to be something where people react strongly to it.
The whole basis of the music is that people have these emotional attachments to these songs - whether they love it or hate it. Being able to manipulate that is a really easy way to connect with people.
I do try to pick music that is from different worlds and typically doesn't flow together. When you do that, you get songs with conflicting messages, but for me, it's on a musical level first and foremost.
I found out about college radio and this whole noise genre blew me away. When I saw that guys could just get up there and have no traditional music ability and be in a band, it was really appealing to me.
I'm interested in anyone cutting up music and doing remixes. I just don't think it would work in a live setting right now to do shows with a traditional DJ, but it's something that might happen eventually.
Me and my friends would drive for eight hours to play for twenty people. That was cool, and if a couple of people bought t-shirts, that would be the greatest thing. We could go eat some hamburgers that night.
I'd been to a lot of shows and I was just tired of people being jaded about music in general. Just a lot of pretensions, a lot of the attitude that goes along with it was a little difficult for me to deal with.
I've been approached about doing some live performance collaborations with DJ's. That is something I'd be interested in getting into down the line, but I've worked very hard to distinguish myself as a laptop artist.
I sometimes get in the car [and] jump all around hunting for a sample, and then I can get really annoying if anyone's in the car with me. But if I'm actually listening to music, I have a pretty solid attention span.
When I would play pop music at underground shows, it was offensive to some people. I wasn't doing it to piss people off: I just didn't believe in those strong divisions that you're supposed to listen to this or that.
People see me on stage and sometimes they think, "Who's this hotdog thinking that he's the best." They miss the point that what I'm doing now comes from a whole different world of doing it for no one with nobody caring.
I think a lot of times people from the traditional DJing world think I'm trying to come up with an ultimate dance mix. That's not really what I'm doing. I'm trying to make something a little bit progressive and challenging.
As the times are changing, you don't hear as many sample issues with rap artists. Part of that has to do with production styles these days, but the nature of copyright is also changing as the internet becomes more of a giant.
CDs are clearly dying out, and it's going to be moving to an all-digital format. Along with it, you raise this interactivity with the music. I feel that it's not stealing sales from anyone; it's turning people on to the music.
When people come to my shows they know there is a distinct beginning and end. It's difficult for me to play for much more than an hour, so people kind of come out and treat it like a rock show. They're fiending and ready to dance.
The internet helps with information exchange in general so it's obviously easier to check out tracks and whatnot from different genres. I think people are a lot more open to music in general because it's being communicated easier.
In 1990 if you heard a song on the radio and you really wanted to hear it again you'd have to buy it on tape or CD. Hearing music doesn't hold that kind of value anymore because anyone can hear it. It's going to become even easier.
To get 300 songs to fit together on an album, it's not like I choose 300 songs and say these are the ones I wanted to pick. To get those 300 songs I sampled 1000's of songs and narrowed down the ones I felt worked the best musically.
I've grown up playing pop music for the experimental crowd and I always feel like I'm pushing something weird on people. I had this underdog feeling. It's crazy that all of a sudden I'm the overhyped band you read about on the blogs.
In the two years of preparing material for shows, I realized there are elements that are definitely going to work live, but might not be the most exciting thing to put on a record. And there's stuff that I really love but it falls flat live.
I'm trying to separate myself from other people by having songs that would be considered - technically - original things. I don't seek out mashups. I'm associated with the whole mashup movement, and it's too bad because I'm not a huge fan of them.
I use minimal software to make my music - a wav editor and a calculator for my beats to make sure everything falls on mathematical precision. If you were just mapping this out visually, it works by math. I guess it's slightly engineering influenced.
I sampled a bit of stuff from my dad's collection. He has probably a bigger record collection than I do. I try to buy as much as possible, because I've never been able to keep an MP3 collection organized. I like to keep my computers as clean as possible.
I hear something I like, and sometimes, I think it's gonna work, and I will cut it up, try it out, try to work with other material. Sometimes, it falls flat, and other times, it works out, so in that way, I'm constantly listening to music because I enjoy it.
You can feel a little vulnerable when you see people tearing you apart on the internet or saying, "It's the end of music." "This guy is a total hack." I've read it all. But at the same time, even though I feel a little vulnerable with that, I do feel comfortable.
When I was 18, I was playing to 18 to 21-year-olds, and then, when I was 25, still playing to 18 to 25-year-olds. As I've gone on, the crowd has gone in both directions, both younger and a little older now than it's ever been. It is an interesting thing to hit 30.
In 2008 it's easy to get huge before you have an album out with the Internet. I think that's great and you see a lot of artists like that. It seems like it's becoming rarer to find a band that has been touring for six years, doing small shows and then breaking out.
I've always enjoyed taking pre-existing sound, songs I like, songs I want to share, and manipulating them and trying to do my own version. So just knowing there's that potential for that thing out there that I haven't discovered yet, really gets me motivated every day.
That's kind of a nostalgia thing. Nirvana was my first favorite band, in third or fourth grade. Then I got out of them. But one day in college a few buddies and myself all started listening to them again and it blew me away. They still stand out as my favorite band ever.