Music in itself carries a whole set of messages which are very, very rich and complex, and the words either serve to exclude certain ones or point up certain others.

Exclusion is never the way forward on our shared paths to freedom and justice.

Tupac, Biggie, Jay. Your usual suspects. These were the people that was played in my household.

What I like about music is the songs you can remember the lines of in a single second.

I believe in singing to such an extent that, if I were asked to redesign the British educational system, I would start by insisting that group singing becomes a central part of the daily routine. I believe it builds character and, more than anything else, encourages a taste for cooperation with others.

Words are more treacherous and powerful than we think.

It was that famous joke: What’s the last thing the drummer said before he got kicked out of the band? ‚Hey, I wrote a song.‘

All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.

The great moments of rock ‚n‘ roll were never off in some corner of the music world, in a self-constructed ghetto.

I’m a huge fan of R. Kelly’s. He’s a musical genius and probably the most prolific artist of the generation before mine.

I feel connected to my generation through the music, but I also fear for us. We’re in a very self-destructive state where we’re addicted to outside opinions and we all feel like we have fans.

I get a more passionate delivery when I just go in the booth and let the music talk.

There’s a lot of pressure putting an album out all over the world and hoping people everywhere like it.

I’m the king of the anthems.

In Hawaii, some of the biggest radio stations are reggae. The local bands are heavily influenced by Bob Marley.

One of my most popular songs, ‚Satellites,‘ I paid $300 for that beat on SoundClick.

The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it’s not going to happen. I’m fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years.

Whenever I think about movies, I always look at that art process as having the best of a lot of worlds. Because if you watch a great film, you have a musical element to it, not just on the scoring, but in the way that the shots are edited – that has music and rhythm and time.

You know, Nirvana used to start rehearsals with the three of us just jamming. For, like, a half an hour, just noise and freeform crap – and usually it was crap. But sometimes things would come from it, and some songs on Nevermind came from that, and ‚Heart Shaped Box‘ and stuff on ‚In Utero‘ just happened that way.

I feel like in my music I can be a rebel. I can say things I wouldn’t say in real life.

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.

Speaking purely from a musical standpoint, I think I am a great performer.

If you look deep enough you will see music; the heart of nature being everywhere music.

I find that when I get on stage now, I don’t want to perform a lot of my songs because they don’t feel like me. So I want to make songs that are timeless.

I grew up in a musical family; the majority of my growing up was done in Hawaii. It’s what we do. You sing, you dance, you play ukulele and you drink.

I hate the idea of genres.

You know, my sister sings, my brother plays drums in my band. My whole family is a bunch of musicians.

All difficult things have their origin in that which is easy, and great things in that which is small.

I didn’t want to play it boring and safe. I also didn’t want to innovate too much. Second albums, man, they’re even scarier than first ones.

A Khaled record is always the best.

Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.

Lyrics are so important, but they’re really underrated.

Educators take something simple and make it complicated. Communicators take something complicated and make it simple.

A lot of people don’t realise I came out of the Smoky Mountains with a load of songs.

I do probably 60 concerts a year in the States. And I go out to clubs in the week. I’m doing new stuff all the time.

I made an album I’m very proud of, and that’s about it.

I love movement. I love moshing.

I say, ‚Yeah, Taylor Swift.‘ I think she is a smart, beautiful girl. I think she’s making all the right moves. She’s got a good head on her shoulders. She’s surrounded with wonderful people. Her songs are great. She keeps herself anchored. She knows who she is, and she’s living and standing by that.

I think that, whatever happens, I’m just happy I’ve written those songs and I’ve made an album. That’s really big for me, and I’m proud of that.

This is the thing about hip-hop music and where people get it most misconstrued: It’s all hip-hop. You can’t say that just what I do is hip-hop, because hip-hop is all energies. James Brown can get on the track and mumble all day. But guess what? You felt his soul on those records.

Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.

I’ve accomplished enough with the music that I haven’t had to go out there and do other things to over-saturate.

I wanted to drop three albums in a year because no one had done it. It was bold, unheard of.

An operatic voice is like no other.

In high school I wanted to be a rock star and was in a lot of bands.

I don’t want to do free jazz! Because free jazz – which is the musical equivalent of free marketeering – isn’t actually free at all. It’s just constrained by what your muscles can do.

Music has the power to inspire the world.

I think it’s really cool when artists have song titles or album names that are a really conversational sentence.

I never wanted to look pretty on stage and sing about something we’ve all heard about before.

Singing aloud leaves you with a sense of levity and contentedness.

I became interested in folk music because I had to make it somehow.

I put out one album one week, and I’m already worried about the next one. I feel a lot of emotion throughout the course of a day. But not to the point where you need to be worried about me.

If you pour your life into songs, you want them to be heard. It’s a desire to communicate. A deep desire to communicate inspires songwriting.

I think what made it difficult for people to get, and still makes it difficult for people to get, is the theatrical nature of the work and the fact that, my music doesn’t exist without the performance-art element.

I can’t make a song for a particular person or demographic. If I love it, I’m gonna do it. I have to perform it for the rest of my life. A song is like a tattoo – you can never get away from it.

I tried to give the world a bit of creativity, lyrics. And for me, I will always represent music from Puerto Rico, reggaeton, Latin music.

I liberate minds with my music. That’s more important than liberating a few people from apartheid or whatever.

As human beings, we are all not conducting just one narrative but many narratives all at the same time.

The British constitution has always been puzzling and always will be.

I often get ideas for songs on the tour bus at odd times. Like at 6am when no one is around, I’d just write.

Honestly, I never really put the mic down.