I like my music to be like a buffet. If you don't like this plate, there's another one for you.
I first bought a Buffy Sainte-Marie record when I was 12, and her music has always remained with me. In the 1960s, as a political activist, Buffy's lyrics were fearless, and I'm very grateful for all the risks that she took.
Good music comes out of people playing together, knowing what they want to do and going for it. You have to sweat over it and bug it to death. You can't do it by pushing buttons and watching a TV screen.
Every James Brown cut makes a party get crazy. He's the god of all music. I always play different wild remixes of his songs because people start bugging out when they realise what I'm playing.
Christian music was such a huge foundation for me, even as a kid, and I grew to love Christian music not only because of the musicianship, which I thought was extraordinary, but because of the message in it. It was such a huge building block of who I was and who I would become.
Music is made up out of these building blocks. Studying how these blocks go together and what they consist of and the math of how it works - it's all the same stuff; it's just different aesthetics that we're talking about.
My bulimia was my addiction. Hurting myself was my addiction... The music is what saved me. That's the only thing I can trust.
Music is a frequency, and my frequency, when I put it out there, is on the love vibes. It's not always sappy. Like, 'Bulletproof' is a love song. It's a black love song. I made it for my people. I made it for the world, but I made it for my people in particular.
I was in college and got arrested. It was a real scare for me/wake-up call/'Man, you better do something with your life 'cause you don't wanna be a bum' call. That's really why I took music serious.
To burn a CDR of music you like to give as a gift to someone you wish to become closer to is a cold, moist-palmed, mouth-breathing bummer.
There's nothing like a music festival. People are ready to have a good time. I don't think anyone comes to a festival going, 'I'm gonna be a complete bummer today.'
It's a bummer sometimes but I always believe that great bands and great music always prevail.
Nashville is wicked. It's like a proper music community, but it's also quintessentially American. You bump into people there with cowboy hats that spit in jars and call you 'boy.' I just love that.
West Coast hip hop was the sound of my neighbourhood. It was something I could relate to because it had a sound that felt like my surroundings - almost more so than what they were saying. That music was made to be bumped in a Cadillac!
Music always gets bumped until I have some time to get around to it.
Folk music is a bunch of fat people.
Making music has always made me happy. When I go through a situation, the best way for me to get over it is to bundle up all of my emotions about it, put it in a little shell, create something, and then let it go.
I was a product of the relationships with my family, the environment I grew up in; all those things I kind of put on the back burner when I got into music, and my life all changed dramatically.
The earth has grown old with its burden of care, but at Christmas it always is young, the heart of the jewel burns lustrous and fair, and its soul full of music breaks the air, when the song of angels is sung.
I see friends who are in different genres of music, and they say they're so burnt playing the same stuff every night. That's why you see a country act wanting to go out and play an old classic rock song. But what cracks me up is that they all want to be Jimmy Buffett. I can't figure that out.
