Music for me, it demands full concentration.

I hate talking about music, to tell you the truth.

Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.

The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time.

Music is well said to be the speech of angels.

It’s a privilege to serve the poor, to be servants of noble Africans, but I better belong in the rehearsal room or in the studio with my band. That’s where I want to be and I still wake up in the morning with melodies in my head.

It’s so sweet, I feel like my teeth are rotting when I listen to the radio.

I don’t sing because I’m happy; I’m happy because I sing.

I don’t think anyone ever plans to change line-ups, but it’s something that comes with being in bands. I was in a band once and there were always problems – members come and go – and some of the world’s biggest bands have changed line-ups loads!

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

In 7th grade, I believe, I wrote my first rap song. It was about everything I was seeing, everything that was going on around me.

Rap was more of a release for me, a journal.

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

I do not love to be printed on every occasion, much less to be dunned and teased by foreigners about mathematical things or to be thought by our own people to be trifling away my time about them when I should be about the king’s business.

Some people focus more on sonics. Some people focus more on story. I focus on both sonics and story.

I never thought, in my lifetime, that you’d be able to watch movies, read books and listen to music from a phone, but I guess the technology of tomorrow is here today.

As long as my music is real, it’s no limit to how many ears I can grab.

There’s something missing in the music industry today… and it’s music. Songs you hear don’t last, it’s just product fed to you by the industry.

Elegance is achieved when all that is superfluous has been discarded and the human being discovers simplicity and concentration: the simpler and more sober the posture, the more beautiful it will be.

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.

Music will never go away, and I will never stop making music; it’s just what capacity or what arena you decide to do it.

In this day and age, when you can use a machine or computer to simulate or emulate what people can do together, it still can’t replace the magic of four people in a room playing.

Anybody that doesn’t like Cardi B a hater!

I just try to write songs that people are going to have a dialogue about.

I’m the same kid who used to hop the trains with headphones and just go to downtown Manhattan, walk around and listen to music or walk through the city. The fame restricts that. It’s a small complaint in comparison to the benefits I get from it, but the restrictive part is what I don’t like – and the fact that it’s not reversible.

It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link of the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.

If one plays good music, people don’t listen and if one plays bad music people don’t talk.

Hip-hop is ever changing but you’ll always have the pack. And you’ll always have those people who are separated from the pack.

If you want to find the source of much of the music of modern day Russia, you will find it in the incredible compositions of that crazed lunatic Berlioz.

If I am a cup maker, I’m interested in making the best cup I possibly can. My effort goes into that cup, not what people think about it.

As a songwriter, you respect and appreciate the writings of other people, and I often get asked, are there songs out there I wish I’d written? Yes. There’s many of them!

Lots of songs aren’t even from my experiences, but they’re about accepting… the dark things about yourself.

Hawaii is paradise. It sounds cheesy to say it, but there’s music in the air there.

The true art of memory is the art of attention.

One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.

I really am a fan of Ye’s music.

It confuses me and disappoints me when somebody says, ‚What does he do? What does he do?‘ My records are some of the biggest anthems ever. What do you think, they magically just appear? Obama walked out to my record.

When I won the first Grammy, there was no other feeling like that feeling. It just made me feel like I came so far, like that was just a dream a few years before that, and then it was happening right then.

My whole life, I’ve sung and listened to music, and since the beginning, I’ve had iTunes and used Apple Music for streaming.

Concentration is my motto – first honesty, then industry, then concentration.

I’ve got my Grammys on top of my piano and I look at them when I play.

Doo-wop is special music to me because it’s so straightforward and melody-driven and captures emotions.

I laugh and joke, but I don’t get distracted very easily.

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.

I taught myself to play the guitar by listening to Paul Simon records, working it out note by note. He is an incredibly intelligent musician. He’s not someone who has a natural outpouring of melody like McCartney or Dylan, who are just terribly prolific with musical ideas.

Music is everybody’s possession. It’s only publishers who think that people own it.

I have a very eclectic iPod. So I’ve got my cardio people – so it’s anything from Beyonce to some Jay-Z to Janelle Monae, her song ‚Tightrope,‘ that’s a good cardio song. And then I’ve got Sting. I’ve got Mary J. Blige. I’ve got The Beatles. I’ve got Michael Jackson. I try to pick the songs that I personally love.

It’s important to love in hip hop.

The vibe on ‚Starboy‘ comes from that hip-hop culture of braggadocio, from Wu-Tang and 50 Cent, the kind of music I listened to as a kid.

Some people are making music just for numbers and views.

I do put a lot of God in my music, but not because I’m super religious. There are a lot of demons in my music, too. I acknowledge both.

My dad was into the 1950s doo-wop era. If you look at those groups, or at James Brown, Jackie Wilson and the Temptations in the 1960s, you’ll see you had to be sharp onstage.

Sometimes I do need to go to karaoke, sometimes I need to relax.

I belong to a gospel choir. They know I am an atheist but they are very tolerant.

Meditation is difficult for many people because their thoughts are always on some distant object or place. One form of meditation is to label the thought as it appears and then choose to let it go.

Where I come from it was really unheard of to be at a party and someone says, ‚What kind of music do you make?‘, and you say, ‚Pop music.‘ You may as well have ‚I’m not cool‘ stamped on your forehead.

‚Bellyache‘ is totally fictional. I like writing about things that aren’t real. The song is about not trusting anyone and then putting trust in yourself and realizing that you don’t know what you are doing, either. Or realizing that things you do with a group of people that you think are cool in the moment are ultimately all on you.

I’ve written all my songs on every single one of my records, and that’s what’s been fun about looking back.

Most of those melodies are me trying to find out what notes fit, and then hitting ones that don’t fit in a very interesting way.

Every album, I make big records. I’m going to always make an anthem. That’s what I do.

I like to read books. I like to listen to music.