I was a super-duper Tupac fan, and I realized later, when I became a huge Nas fan and a huge Eminem fan, I was drawn to the storytellers. They all told stories in different ways, but they were all like the best storytellers.

I think music is something that can, and should, be used to get you into different things because eventually what goes up must come down – we’re not going to be the number one group in the world forever – so you have to have something else to fall back on.

The album requires a certain focus of mine that I can’t really explain – let’s just say it’s all I can really do while I’m doing it.

U2’s best work has always been when we didn’t know what we’re doing.

I realized the power of hip-hop. I realized how influential this music and this culture are.

My whole family are hams. They’re storytellers and everyone outdoes the next one.

If music be the food of love, play on.

Some artists just ruin their voices because they don’t know any better.

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.

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.

Music has to be sort of ignorable sometimes.

Who’s to say what’s a good voice and not a good voice?

When I was performing the songs on ‚Kiss Land,‘ it was a great singalong. But there were moments where I realized some parts were catchier than the others. There’s maybe two choruses on all of ‚Kiss Land.‘

I think my first album opened a lot of doors for me to push the freedom of speech to the limit.

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.

I know a lot of people who wouldn’t be comfortable with everything that comes with being in a band as big as Nirvana. The thing that I don’t understand is not appreciating that simple gift of being able to play music.

I never listen to the radio unless I rent a car.

I’ve noticed a lot of younger artists have less fear of doing different sorts of things, whether it’s various types of music, or gallery artists moving between video and sculpture and drawing.

I wouldn’t call myself a synaesthete in the sense that Nabokov was. But I’ll talk about a sound as being cold blue or dark brown. For descriptive purposes, yes, I often see colors when I’m listening to music and think, ‚Oh, there’s not enough sort of yellowy stuff in here, or not enough white.‘

I’ve never written a political song. Songs can’t save the world. I’ve gone through all that.

Being a student of hip-hop in general, you take technical aspects from places. You may take a rhyme pattern or flow from Big Daddy Kane or Kool G Rap.

I found music to be the therapy of choice. I guess it is for a lot of people.

I want to be a recording artist for my whole entire life. But Broadway is something I would come back to at any given moment. I love, love, love doing theater.

On Saturday afternoons when all the things are done in the house and there’s no real work to be done, I play Bach and Chopin and turn it up real loudly and get a good bottle of chardonnay and sit out on my deck and look out at the garden.

You have to be a bastard to make it, and that’s a fact. And the Beatles are the biggest bastards on earth.

I live half the year on Necker, a tiny island in the Caribbean, and it’s always full of people in party mode. Everyone comes up to the big house, and we’ll be dancing until the early hours to the island’s band, the Front Line.

I try to really capitalize off of what other rappers really can’t do. There are opportunities that rappers I love simply can’t get, because… you know… I don’t have the tattoos; I have a different image.

I wanted a name I could shape the music towards. I was going to Miami quite a lot at the time, speaking a lot of Spanish with my friends from Cuba – ‚Lana Del Rey‘ reminded us of the glamour of the seaside. It sounded gorgeous coming off the tip of the tongue.

Your personal history is a part of what happens with your hands and your head as you play music.

I think that when you’re making your way up in the music industry, you have all these heroes and the reasons why they are your heroes. As soon as you get into the industry, your guidelines change a little bit. For me, my heroes now are great people first and great artists second.

My music is influenced by L.A. culture.

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

There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.

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

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.

Music fills in for words a lot of the time when people don’t know what to say, and I think music can be more eloquent than words.

The most miraculous process is watching a song go from a tiny idea in the middle of the night to something that 55,000 people are singing back to you.

Music, the greatest good that mortals know and all of heaven we have hear below.

When I put out ‚Video Games‘ in May 2011, it was a 5:25-minute love song; I was surprised when a lot of people said they were listening to it. I was surprised when it went to the radio, without me even knowing how something like that even happens!

It is one thing to record an album but it’s a huge difference when people play it and listen to it and embrace it the way that I do. It has always been my dream to get my music out to the world and have people hear it.

I’ve always loved Def Leppard, ever since I was little.

People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties. They are still being passed around – the music and the ideas.

I love movement. I love moshing.

I’ve always loved the fans in Scotland and have a little Scottish blood of my own.

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.

I play the harmonica. The only way I can play is if I get my car going really fast, and stick it out the window.

The songs are my lexicon. I believe the songs.

Sometimes you stumble across a few chords that put you in a reflective place.

I don’t know which will go first – rock ‚n‘ roll or Christianity.

I really like Lady GaGa and everything she is for her fans.

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.

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.

‚Wrecking Ball‘ is a great song.

I have to work really hard to get the record deal – I have to spend years at it to get good. I have to practice to be good at guitar.

Music is my shining light, my favorite thing in the world. T get me to stop doing it for one second would be difficult!

I just have a thing in my brain that when I’m about to do something that’s genuine or authentic, I think of it in song form. I’ll be like, ‚Yo, this is a human emotion that no one talks about.‘

Artists are notoriously snooty and suspicious of anything coming from the business community.

If there’s not drama and negativity in my life, all my songs will be really wack and boring or something.

A song is anything that can walk by itself.

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.

In Puerto Rico we dance to everything.