When I'm doing just music all the time, it can get really overwhelming. It's always challenging to switch it up a bit. And just because you're a musician, it doesn't mean that music is your only creative outlet.
I feel like fashion and music relate to each other in a lot of ways. I always had to be creative: I'm a very creative person. I always liked making stuff. Apart from music, I always liked making clothes. You're able to express yourself.
I didn't have a regular school experience and wanted a more abstract way of learning. I started exploring in lots of different creative ways. It gave me the opportunity to travel and play music, so it was good for me.
I would do a sort of violence to myself if I didn't express myself in the directly creative ways of writing, both words and music.
I couldn't find a way to write music with numbers and rules and schedules. So I tried to forget the academic idea of music and started to see if it was possible to do creative work, taking in all the influences I wanted to keep.
Creative writing lessons can be very useful, just like music lessons can be useful. To say, as Hanif Kureishi did, that 99.9% of students are talentless is cruel and wrong. I believe that certain writers like to believe they arrived into the world with special, unteachable powers because it is good for the ego.
Thirty-three-years-old, still creating art. It's rage, it's creativity, it's pain, it's hurt, but it's the opportunity to still have my voice get out there through music.
If I did all the stuff I've been accused of - or credited with - there's no way I could make all this music. I'd be drinking myself into the grave.
I have moments of darkness, of anger, and moments of rage. They do creep up at the most inopportune times. Not to recognize that in my music would give people a sense of sainthood that I don't necessarily have or even want to have.
When you're making music, you're creeping up on your heart and pouring it out into something.
I have taken taking my music to labels for years, and everyone just thought it was creepy. They thought the images with the music were weird and verging on psychotic.
In order to understand the history of the banjo, and the history of bluegrass music, we need to move beyond the narrative we've inherited, beyond generalizations that bluegrass is mostly derived from a Scotch-Irish tradition with influences from Africa. It is actually a complex Creole music that comes from multiple cultures.
My mom used to always play hip-hop around the crib, but moreso than that, she played reggae, and I grew up on reggae music more than I grew up on hip-hop.
My mother told me when I was a toddler and in the crib that they would have music playing, and the thing when I lit up was boogie-woogie or something out of the Louie Jordan period of sometimes big bands, and then all kinds of things.
It wasn't until 9th grade that I got into music. This guy in school heard me singing around the hallway to girls and stuff. The girls liked it. One day, he was like, 'Come to my crib. I got a studio. Come and record a hook for me.' I recorded the hook on the 'Lovers & Friends' beat - Usher.
The songs that I like are the ones that you can't visualize, that are just cries from the heart - those very straight, direct songs that make rock & roll music so wonderful.
I wanted people to say that our music sounds like Porcupine Tree, not that it sounds like King Crimson.
When I was growing up, I was always looking for the most willfully uncommercial music: Whether it was Captain Beefheart or Frank Zappa or King Crimson, that's what attracted me.
Yeah, I know, any time you hear an actor say, 'I do music', you cringe. But I want to be gradual with my music. I want to earn my stripes.
I divide criticism into two categories - one coming from those who understand music, who are worthy of being critical because they are knowledgeable about what they are saying; and then there is another category of people who would criticise you anyway, whether your work is good or bad.
