I would say that I’m more moved by melody, even though I love to rap.

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

It’s an honor for me to represent urban music, reggaeton, trap and hip-hop.

Biggie Smalls, Jay-Z, Nas, Eminem, Big L, Tupac. That was, like, my top five, generally.

I’d like to do a completely off-the-wall collaboration. I would like one of my songs to be the hook to a rap song. That would be so much fun!

I usually write lyrics first, and then when I get home or close to any kind of instrument, I usually make a melody for those lyrics.

When I was fourteen and first started going out, I always wanted to be the opposite of everyone else. So I would go to the club in a polo T-shirt and pants and sneakers and a hat on backward, just so I would not be dressed like other girls.

Fashion is life-enhancing, and I think it’s a lovely, generous thing to do for other people.

Rap was my drug.

From the moment I started writing raps, I was always aware of the pressure. I always wanted to live up to how huge Snoop got, how huge Dre got, how huge Pac got. I was always aware.

For me it’s always contingent on getting a sound-the sound always suggests what kind of melody it should be. So it’s always sound first and then the line afterwards.

I just write what I wanted to write. I write what amuses me. It’s totally for myself. I never in my wildest dreams expected this popularity.

Most of my fans, if you were to look on their iPods, you’d see every possible genre of music represented in some capacity.

I’m not trying to be fashionable. Never was!

My whole thing is to inspire, to better people, to better myself forever in this thing that we call rap, this thing that we call hip hop.

I was looking for something a lot heavier, yet melodic at the same time. Something different from heavy metal, a different attitude.

I used to – my earliest memory of waking up with a melody in my head was, you know, 8, 9, 10. I’ve always heard kind of melodies in my head.

I’ve always been a fan of melody and emotional melancholy, whether it was Rites of Spring or Tears for Fears or Neil Young. If I hear a song that has a sweet melody, I’m a sucker for it, whether it’s Linkin Park or Little Richard.

Music is the melody whose text is the world.

I just like tattoos.

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.

When I am putting looks together, I dare myself to make something work. I always look for the most interesting silhouette or something that’s a little off, but I have to figure it out. I have to make it me. I think that’s the thrill in fashion.

I can’t even speak Hawaiian, but if you go there and listen to a Hawaiian song, you get captured because it’s so beautiful, like the melody is just gorgeous and you know Bob Marley is on the radio every single day. It’s very reggae-influenced down there. Basically, you haven’t been to paradise if you haven’t been to Hawaii.

I think tattoos are horrible. It’s like living in a Pucci dress full-time.

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.

Songs are my diaries; they always have been. You have to put your trust in everyone because putting down those real, personal details and thoughts that make a song authentic also opens you right up. I am constantly misunderstood; a lot of people just don’t get me.

In a certain way, it’s the sound of the words, the inflection and the way the song is sung and the way it fits the melody and the way the syllables are on the tongue that has as much of the meaning as the actual, literal words.

Dance music is no longer a simple Donna Summer beat. It’s become a whole language that I find fascinating and exciting. Eventually, it will lose the dance tag and join the fore of rock.

The world is never quiet, even its silence eternally resounds with the same notes, in vibrations which escape our ears. As for those that we perceive, they carry sounds to us, occasionally a chord, never a melody.

I definitely think, generally, rap is misogynistic.

My style has always been my own, just like my flow and style.

We came up with TDE. As competitive as rap is, and as much as we’re trying to exceed the standards we set for ourselves, we take their wins as our wins, too.

I really like hip-hop and rap; that’s my main influence. I really wanna be more of a hip-hop artist.

I pay attention to lyrics and I know what rap fans care about. I try to write for the average listener and I’m conscious of the mainstream without selling out.

Dropkick Murphys get me going, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nirvana… plus, all the regular hip-hop stuff.

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

For me, genres are a way for people to easily categorize music. But it doesn’t have to define you. It doesn’t have to limit you.

No, I can’t do rap music!

In my songs, I’m not saying something that’s never been said before. The have lyrics aren’t going to blow people away. It’s the emotion and the melody that drive it home.

Fashion is very important. It is life-enhancing and, like everything that gives pleasure, it is worth doing well.

I don’t even listen to rap. My apartment is too nice to listen to rap in.

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

I still wanna rap better than everybody else, and I wanna say important things.

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

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

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.

I admire people who dare to take the language, English, and understand it and understand the melody.

You know, there are artists who are 35 and up that still make rap and that still works for them. I don’t know if I want to be that guy.

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.

Honestly, I’d love to be remembered as one of the best to ever pick up a mic, but if I’m doing my part to lessen some racial tension I feel good about what I’m doing.

They say you can rap about anything except for Jesus, that means guns, sex, lies, video tapes, but if I talk about God my record won’t get played Huh?

Compton got such a legacy in hip-hop.

My only scheme was to be a rapper.

The writing process, the way I go about it is I do whatever the beat feels like, whatever the beat is telling me to do. Usually when the beat comes on, I think of a hook or the subject I want to rap about almost instantly. Within four, eight bars of it playing I’m just like, ‚Oh, OK. This is what I wanna do‘.

I would say that jazz is my own language.

When I’m writing, I’m thinking about how the songs are going to play live. Fifty bars of rap don’t translate onstage. No matter how potent the music, you lose the crowd. They want a hook; they want to sing your stuff back to you.

People do dismiss ambient music, don’t they? They call it ‚easy listening,‘ as if to suggest that it should be hard to listen to.

My songs are like my children – I expect them to support me when I’m old.

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

I don’t just listen to rap.

I don’t know how the rap game is, because I’m a fan of reality, and the rap game’s entertainment.