I sang a lot of low stuff on songs like ‚Secrets‘ and ‚Rockin‘,‘ almost like Toni Braxton. On ‚Secrets,‘ I’m a different person.

I was part of Jazzercise class. It was an aerobics routine accompanied by loud music, sounding quite awful to me. Jazzercise was popular in the ’80s and ’90s.

There were people who incorporated melody before me, but I would deem myself the first person to successfully rap and sing.

When I’m writing a record, I kind of don’t listen to much music. Just because I want to be inspired solely on the emotion; just based on how it feels.

If you talk bad about country music, it’s like saying bad things about my momma. Them’s fightin‘ words.

I would love to get Rihanna on a Khaled song. That’s my friend, but every time I’m around her, I get shy.

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

However, there’s no theme or concept behind Heathen, just a number of songs but somehow there is a thread that runs through it that is quite as strong as any of my thematic type albums.

One of the interesting things about having little musical knowledge is that you generate surprising results sometimes; you move to places you wouldn’t if you knew better.

I don’t think of Kurt as ‚Kurt Cobain from Nirvana‘. I think of him as ‚Kurt‘. It’s something that comes back all the time. Almost every day.

I booked my first studio at like 12 or 13. Somewhere in that season of my life, singing along with the radio became me wanting to be on radio, you know. And writing Langston Hughes replica poems became me wanting to write like Stevie Wonder.

So many girls come up and say to me, ‚I have never listened to country music in my life. I didn’t even know my town had a country-music station. Then I got your record, and now I’m obsessed.‘ That’s the coolest compliment to me.

Music, for me, is vital. Punjabi, Bollywood, Sufi, RnB… I listen to it all. When I’m not listening to music, you will find me chatting with friends. Off the field, I just let my instincts take over. I certainly don’t think about batting, or which bowlers I’m going to face.

I wanted to be famous for my music and my talent, and I always wished I could cut it out when I left the stage.

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?

I don’t ever want to come out with something safe and get away with, ‚It sounds good!‘ It’s got to be more than sounding good. The music I like are events.

Rap music is the only vital form of music introduced since punk rock.

Music is not math. It’s science. You keep mixing the stuff up until it blows up on you, or it becomes this incredible potion.

There’s been people who’ve rapped and produced – like Kanye – but I don’t feel like on the rapping side there’s ever been a producer who can rap as good as I think I can rap.

I think I can keep a rhythm to a beat, but there are quite a few people who would argue with me.

For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.

I want to keep making records as long as I can, but I don’t know how long you can be taken seriously in rap.

I like Cardi B!

One of my big fears is people saying my songs are all starting to sound the same.

There’s something about music that encourages people to want to know more about the person that made it, and where it was recorded, what year it was done, what they were listening to, and all this kind of stuff. There’s something that invites all this obsessive behavior.

What I’m hoping is that every album I’m going to do will give my audience something different, and that they’ll grow as I do.

I listen to my old records and I think, ‚How did I ever get on the radio?‘

Confidence, as a teenager? Because I knew what I loved. I loved to read; I loved to listen to music; and I loved cats. Those three things. So, even though I was an only kid, I could be happy because I knew what I loved.

Every day that is born into the world comes like a burst of music and rings the whole day through, and you make of it a dance, a dirge, or a life march, as you will.

We tend to mistake music for the physical object.

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

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

I’m personally more struck by visual things more than musical.

Music is in my DNA!

I find in my poetry and prose the rhythms and imagery of the best – I mean, when I’m at my best – of the good Southern black preachers. The lyricism of the spirituals and the directness of gospel songs and the mystery of blues are in my music or in my poetry and prose, or I missed everything.

I’m a big fan of songs like Joe Cocker’s ‚You Are So Beautiful‘ and Eric Clapton’s ‚Wonderful Tonight‘ – songs that go straight to the point.

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.

My songs always sound a lot better in person than they do on the record.

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

I just know that I’m a fan of all different kinds of genres. You’re supposed to be free doing music, and that’s how I feel.

I don’t want to make niche-oriented music.

What inspires me about rap is that it’s written in an almost poetic way. I just think it’s so cool.

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

Hawaiian music is beautiful and simple.

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.

I own a ’66 Jaguar. That’s the guitar I polish, and baby – I refuse to let anyone touch it when I jump into the crowd.

U2 is sort of song writing by accident really. We don’t really know what we’re doing and when we do, it doesn’t seem to help.

I could imagine at a certain age, when I have no vocal cords left, that I would find a young man who could sing my parts for me. But I don’t see why I would stop.

Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone’s singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person. That’s the only way I can find an explanation for why 55,000 people would want to come see me sing.

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.

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

And I saw the sax line-up that he had behind him and I thought, I’m going to learn the saxophone. When I grow up, I’m going to play in his band. So I sort of persuaded my dad to get me a kind of a plastic saxophone on the hire purchase plan.

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

If tomorrow I want to release a rock album or I want to release a bachata album, nobody can tell me anything – why can’t I?

In music the passions enjoy themselves.

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

People like music when they’re in love, but they don’t need it as much. You need music when you’re missing someone or you’re pining for someone or you’re forgetting someone or you’re trying to process what just happened.

Metal, I love metal sounds. If I have a stick with me, I just drag it across a fence. And all fences make different sounds, just like people when they laugh.

Music is a really great creative tool for me, for different roles.

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.

Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument – learning to do your craft – that’s the most important thing! It’s not about what goes on in a computer!