My fans love me for me, my beats, my rhymes.

Television sounded really different than the Ramones sounded really different than us sounded really different than Blondie sounded really different than the Sex Pistols.

The whole slacker generation totally didn’t apply to us musically.

I used to really love Fiend, but he stopped. He just stopped. Every time he had a project, every project – ‚There’s One In Every Family,‘ ‚Street Life‘ – I had to have them. And he just stopped. And that was disappointing, ‚cause that was my favorite rapper at one time.

People are already finding ways to make their music and play it in front of people and have a life in music, I guess, and I think that’s pretty much all you can ask.

Music has the power to inspire the world.

The music we do is for people to enjoy, dance and sing to it. Dreamers – keep on dreaming and keep working hard to achieve your goals. There are many difficulties, but what matters is to stay focused and have perseverance.

The point about melody and beat and lyric is that they exist to engage you in a very particular way. They want to occupy your attention.

In the 1960s, people were trying to get away from the pop song format. Tracks were getting longer, or much, much shorter.

Most rock journalism is people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read.

From the beginning of my rap career, since I was seen and heard, I always had a store.

My music is influenced by L.A. culture.

Mozart’s music is so pure and beautiful that I see it as a reflection of the inner beauty of the universe.

Sing me a new song; the world is transfigured; all the Heavens are rejoicing.

I owe everything to Nirvana. But I can’t let that overshadow the future. For the first few years, I didn’t even want to talk about Nirvana. Partly because it was just painful to talk about losing Kurt but also because I wanted the Foo Fighters to mean something.

Sometimes, I want to talk on a song and be angry, because I am angry. Then there’s always a part of me that remembers that this record lives past my being angry, and so do I really want to be angry about that? Is that feeling going to have longevity?

If I’m gonna write songs about my exes, they can write songs about me. That’s how it works.

I just hope people don’t get sick of us. I’m sick of us and I’m in Destiny’s Child.

I taught myself how to play the guitar, I taught myself how to play the drums, and I kind of fake doing both of them. But drumming comes more natural to me, and it just feels better.

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 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.

For instance, I’m always fascinated to see whether, given the kind of fairly known and established form called popular music, whether there is some magic combination that nobody has hit upon before.

I enjoy all forms of music – pop, classical and opera.

I hope that what you take away from my album is not just the music – which I did want to be fun, and I did want it to be about individuality, but please also take away from it that there’s no dream that’s too big.

When I heard Little Richard, I mean, it just set my world on fire.

I really appreciate the moments that I was able to win rap album of the year or whatever.

If it weren’t for the Beatles, I would not be a musician.

Speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again.

One of my lungs is half gone, and the other half, because I smoked for years, has a lesion. So I can’t swim anymore and had the swimming pool covered over. Now it’s what I call the dance pavilion, and so I and my friends sit out and put music on and watch people dance.

‚Doo-wop‘ is a very special word for me. Because I grew up listening to my dad who, as a Fifties rock & roll head, loved doo-wop music.

I alone of English writers have consciously set myself to make music out of what I may call the sound of sense.

Music is like film to me.

I’ve made sure that in any situation and with any record label, I’m allowed to write my own music.

I don’t just listen to rap.

Hawaiian music is beautiful and simple.

One often makes music to supplement one’s world.

Cause I’m a musician, I’m not really good at posing and being a model, like, modeling.

When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music. Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison?

When you’re a pop star, it’s a little conservative; you always have to stay in a box. You have fans that are five and fans that are 65; there are so many people wanting so many things.

The songs are my lexicon. I believe the songs.

But when I hear a great song, I can’t help but be inspired by it, regardless of whatever genre that song falls under.

When I listen to ‚Nevermind,‘ I hate the production, but there’s something about it that almost makes me cry at times.

I just love working with Eminem. He’s just one of my favorite rappers, and his lyrics – he’s a true poet, and I enjoy that about him.

I think I have the nicest fans in the world, and I quite like being surrounded by people if we’re all feeling the same emotion in the same room.

There’s always gonna be rock n‘ roll bands, there’s always gonna be kids that love rock n‘ roll records, and there will always be rock n‘ roll.

I used to consider the listener. But now I’m in a space where, if I’m not inspired, I can’t really do the music. I can’t feel it.

Everyone I look up to is bringing me into the tech world. You’d be surprised by all the music people in it, invested in it.

The first rap CD that I had, it was so different for me. The energy, the wordplay, all that caught my attention, and I liked it.

No one sells a song better than the person that wrote it.

My mami and papi love my music. They’re always listening to the radio waiting for one of my songs to come on. And when it does, they turn up the volume – and turn it back down when it’s over.

Whatever I’m feeling, whatever I’m going through, whatever mood I’m in… If I’m feeling like dancing or clubbing, then it will be reflected in the music. If I’m feeling dark and vulnerable, then it will reflect in the music, too.

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.

Chicago gave me more music than any other city in America.

I just really want to get music out and tour and go places I’ve never been, and just do more videos. I love photography and videography, and so I really want to direct videos when I can.

We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first, rock ‚n‘ roll or Christianity.

To be honest, I never really considered myself to be too much of an actress. So, whenever I get the chance to do music, I’m always, like, just in it. It’s like, ‚Oh my God, I finally get to do this. I’m so happy.‘

Here’s what I think about music and journalism: The most important thing is to just press play.

I think that the idea of having a different approach to every single one of my albums is so exciting to me. I never want to make the same record twice. Why do it? What’s the point?

The boys know they’re from Southeast Asia, and they have their food and their music and their friends, and they have a pride particular to them.

I’ve always been a singer. I never really decided I was gonna be a singer. It just kind of – I just sung a lot.

My mother is a singer, my sisters all sing, my uncles are incredible singers and guitar players, so it’s just kind of been like my habitat.