Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I have an AIDS ribbon tattooed on my arm.
The music industry is transforming fairly rapidly.
Some songs go super-quick; some take a really long time.
I have never been wired to be front and centre of spotlight and ready to dance.
There's an open door now more than ever to be making any type of beats that you want.
I love history, cultural and religious studies, philosophy, photography and traveling.
The process is so much longer than the result for almost everything all of us are doing.
I'm not trying to make beats that are better than somebody else's. I'm trying to make beats that are genuine to me.
How do I use my platform? How do you join in a way that is useful and not distracting and not shining a light on you?
When artists who are not associated with the typical infrastructure get recognition, that becomes a cultural movement.
I graduated in 2009, which - if you think back to where the economy was at that time - was an interesting time to graduate.
Coming out of the Northwest and that environment to shoot hip-hop videos, it's a little atypical of a place to be, you know.
For me personally, to hop onboard and use the amazing success and blessings in my life to pull off something like the 30/30 Project is awesome.
I'm the only person in my entire extended family that plays an instrument or sings, really. Which is kind of weird. I don't know where I got it from.
Rick Rubin is super intriguing to me because he has become this god producer in completely drastically different genres, which very few people have done.
The world is an unfair place because of bullying. A lot of parents loose their children because of bullying next time think twice before bullying someone.
Hip-hop music was something I grew up with, it was something that I loved since I was a little kid, and it's something that I chose to partake in an early age.
You have no idea what you're passionate about until you give it a shot. If I hadn't been given a guitar or a camera or whatever, I'd be doing something different.
In 1984, my mom gave birth to my older sister, Teresa. Due to a complicated delivery, she needed a blood transfusion, and at that moment, my mom had HIV+ blood put into her body.
Any time we have the opportunity to play in a more intimate room, there's such a huge aspect of our set just built for that. And beyond that, we just love being that close to our fans.
Everyone has their parent's [music] collection which is strongly influences what you listen to as a kid. You have no choice. You have to listen to whatever they're bumpin. I grew up with what they listened to a lot.
I don't think I would be here in an interview if YouTube wasn't in existence, if social media hadn't been developed, or if these platforms for artists to promote and develop their own careers hadn't become available.
I would love to be one of the few artists that hits a point of success and can go back into the studio and make another album that matters and relates to people and not go back in and be super tainted by this whole thing.
I think most producers and MCs are constantly in this competition, but it's usually with yourself. It's usually wanting to be innovative: wanting to catch yourself when you're doing the same thing or throwing out the same art you've already done.
Seattle isn't known for a particular production sound, so that leaves a lot of great producers in Seattle doing kind of their own thing. And I think, for me, I was probably enough removed from hip-hop that my style was even a little bit weirder than that.
I was always the type of drug user that I had no moderation. When I was smoking and drinking, I was full on smoking and drinking. And I am also the type of drug user where I do smoke and drink, there's no creativity in terms of my writing process. I would just stare at the paper for hours and nothing would get done.
I bring up 'The Heist,' and you can almost cut that record down the middle between songs where the beat came first and the words came second, and songs where the words came first and the beat came second. It can start with a vibe, a beat that drives a story, or it can start with a story and then trying to identify the tone to tell that story right.