I'm probably the only kid in history whose parents made him stop taking music lessons. They made me stop studying the accordion.
The accordion came from just having a desire to play music. Somehow, I have slowly taught myself.
I think too much of the music industry is for the lawyer and accountant mentality.
A lot of labels are hiring a lot more accountants than people that know music.
When it all started, record companies - and there were many of them, and this was a good thing - were run by people who loved records, people like Ahmet Ertegun, who ran Atlantic Records, who were record collectors. They got in it because they loved music... Now, record companies are run by lawyers and accountants.
If I know you're very good in music, I can predict with just about zero accuracy whether you're going to be good or bad in other things.
Music can describe emotions far more accurately than words ever can. As soon as I realised that, I knew music was where I wanted to be.
I would never withhold information about the murder of my man Biggie, or anybody else. It's just silly and ridiculous. The accusations are just flying out. All I've been trying to do all my life is to make great music.
Maybe someday you can accuse somebody of being a poseur by selling out and playing blues music, but that's just not going to happen in my lifetime.
The whole world recognizes Russia's cultural achievements. It is impossible to imagine the world culture without Russian culture, without our music and literature.
A painter, who finds no satisfaction in mere representation, however artistic, in his longing to express his inner life, cannot but envy the ease with which music, the most non-material of the arts today, achieves this end. He naturally seeks to apply the methods of music to his own art.
I wish I had more confidence. I think that's probably my Achilles' heel. If I had more, I probably would have felt emboldened to make more interesting music earlier on, or really go for it in an artistic or songwriting sense.
The whole point of 'Acid Rap' was just to ask people a question: does the music business side of this dictate what type of project this is? If it's all original music and it's got this much emotion around it and it connects this way with this many people, is it a mixtape? What's an 'album' these days, anyways?
Every song on '10 Day' is a completely different sound - the cadence, the flow, even the production - because I like so many different types of music and because my taste is so refined. 'Acid Rap' is another tape where every song sounds different.
To me, this degree was an acknowledgment of my work in music.
I wasn't a jock in school, and by the 10th grade, when I was in boarding school I was carrying water buckets for the girls' hockey team. I was the kid with long hair and glasses and acne trying to learn how to play guitar and piano in the music center. I was not an athlete past the age of 13 or 14 when they start throwing the ball really fast.
I have pictures of me sitting in the racquetball court in my pajamas with an acoustic guitar, and Wolfgang is probably just two-and-a-half-feet tall. I'll never forget the day I saw his foot tapping along in beat! I knew then, I couldn't wait for the day I'd be able to make music with my son. I don't know what more I could ask for.
I started out in the folk music world only because of the way my songs were written and performed, with just an acoustic guitar, but I always related to the rock n' roll lifestyle.
I made a conscious decision when I was recording 'Acoustic Soul' to - and this is one of my mantras - follow the music and let the chips fall where they may.
With 'Acoustic Soul,' I saw my music as sparse. But I didn't do that because I was making a commitment to be commercial. That's what made 'Acoustic Soul' so difficult to produce. It took 2 1/2 years because I couldn't figure out what I wanted and still be commercial.
