Music has to be sort of ignorable sometimes.

I really love the culture of hip-hop.

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.

My music fights against the system that teaches to live and die.

My only scheme was to be a rapper.

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!

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.

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

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.

I don’t know if I ever feel totally great about a record when I put it out. With every record that I put out, someone has literally got to come pry it from me because when I listen to my own music, I just hear flaws in it.

So there’s nothing more provocative than taking a genre that everybody who’s cool hates – and then making it cool.

It’s nice, I think, when people use your music for things you didn’t think of.

It’s not true I had nothing on, I had the radio on.

The sound and music are 50% of the entertainment in a movie.

I collect records. And cats. I don’t have any cats right now. But if I’m taking a walk and I see a cat, I’m happy.

In music the passions enjoy themselves.

Songs don’t have to be about going out on Saturday night and having a good rink-up and driving home and crashing cars. A lot of what I’ve done is about alienation… about where you fit in society.

If you play an instrument, it makes you a better singer. The more you play, the better you sing, the more you sing, the better you play.

I’m such an emotional and sensitive person, so it only makes sense that my songs are as well.

I listen to music that is of our time and I just get angry.

Occasionally, I hanker for the time when I sold more records, but I don’t sit and drool about it. When I do look at early footage of Talking Heads, I realise I was just a wreck.

Music is part of the life of fashion, too.

My experience with songwriting is usually so confessional, it’s so drawn from my own life and my own stories.

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

I’m not suggesting people abandon musical instruments and start playing their cars and apartments, but I do think the reign of music as a commodity made only by professionals might be winding down.

Five or six songs leaked from the original version of ‚Encore.‘ So I had to go in and make new songs to replace them.

I put out one album one week, and I’m already worried about the next one. I feel a lot of emotion throughout the course of a day. But not to the point where you need to be worried about me.

An operatic voice is like no other.

I always had music growing up, but music was also like a journal. It was like my personal diary or personal journal. A lot of the things I couldn’t express to an individual, I would express them in my music.

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.

To all the musicians, to the Academy, with all due respect, reggaeton is part of our Latin culture. And its representing as much as any other genre at the worldwide level.

I’m putting out this free music, constantly putting it out.

I have so many playlists full of Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, Lil Wayne, Chris Brown.

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

While musical experts of the world focus on what choir members can do, I would like to focus on what choir members can be.

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 never could get over the fact that The Pixies formed, worked and separated without America taking them to its heart or even recognizing their existence for the most part.

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

You know, my sister sings, my brother plays drums in my band. My whole family is a bunch of musicians.

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

The problem with fine art is that in most cases people have to make a special excursion to go and look at it: they can’t afford to own it. So it isn’t really part of their life in the way that music can be.

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

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?

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

‚Wrecking Ball‘ is a great song.

I’m an iPod person.

I would say that jazz is my own language.

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.

When you listen to Ray Charles, there’s never any doubt whose voice that is.

Every day, my mom and I would watch a different Judy Garland VHS. I love how she tells a story when she sings. It was just about her voice and the words she was singing – no strings attached or silly hair or costumes, just a woman singing her heart out. I feel like that doesn’t happen that much anymore.

Nothing feels better than going onstage and everybody is singing every word – and actually wanting to see you.

If it’s good music, it’s good music.

Today, I’d like to talk to Bob Marley. I’d just like to ask him what was his method. Bob is one of the greatest songwriters ever. I don’t know if people understand how powerful his songs are and the simplicity and genius behind them, from ‚Redemption Song‘ to ‚Is This Love?‘ and ‚I Shot the Sheriff.‘

I love the Sex Pistols. I’m a big Beach Boys fan and a huge Zeppelin and Queen fan.

If I heard someone else singing like me, I would buy it in a heartbeat.

Music for me, it demands full concentration.

I like being able to be on the inside of music, rather than on the outside listening to it.

I feel that when you care about your music, taking risks is something you should do to keep things exciting.

Now, we are selling over 5 million songs a day now. Isn’t that unbelievable? That’s 58 songs every second of every minute of every hour of every day.

I just wanted to be a songwriter. I did really not like the sound of my own voice.

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