The jazz I love is sweet and pure with raw elements, which is exactly what the good hip-hop is doing now.

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

I really started writing music to challenge myself, to see what I could write.

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.

That’s why I hate to get started in these jam sessions. I’m always the last one to leave.

In the 1960s, people were trying to get away from the pop song format. Tracks were getting longer, or much, much shorter.

Making music is like shopping for me. Every song is like a new pair of shoes.

I used to think that, given enough goodwill, anybody would be able to ‚get‘ any music, no matter how distant the culture from which it came. And then I heard Chinese opera.

Some people are making music just for numbers and views.

Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn’t get some of that stuff out.

I feel connected to my generation through the music, but I also fear for us. We’re in a very self-destructive state where we’re addicted to outside opinions and we all feel like we have fans.

Madonna, I think, is the greatest visual musical artist that we’ve ever had. If you look at her photo log, the photographers that she was able to work with throughout her career framed her in the proper way. It was the proper context. It was that visual that made sure that everything was gonna cut through in a certain way.

I always loved that old song ‚Banks of the Ohio‘ – it was always such a man’s song, so I’ve always wanted to record it.

Rap was my drug.

Most people wouldn’t know music if it came up and bit them on the ass.

When I was in high school, there were these British blues-rock-type bands with really good guitar players that would jam on one song for half an hour. And as much as I was amazed by some of those guitar players, seeing them prompted me to make a note that that’s not something I could do.

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 love Chris Brown. He’s a superstar. He’s one of the best singers out there.

Human beings love poetry. They don’t even know it sometimes… whether they’re the songs of Bono, or the songs of Justin Bieber… they’re listening to poetry.

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

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!

There’s a lot of pressure putting an album out all over the world and hoping people everywhere like it.

We uploaded ‚Ocean Eyes‘ to SoundCloud, and it started getting a lot of plays pretty much immediately.

I grew up on the Beatles; I love Linkin Park and Green Day. I heard hip-hop for the first time at 11 and realized what I was missing.

My only scheme was to be a rapper.

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.

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.

Is Wagner a human being at all? Is he not rather a disease? He contaminates everything he touches – he has made music sick.

I used to consider the listener. But now I’m in a space where, if I’m not inspired, I can’t really do the music. I can’t feel it.

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

Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance is sculpted into something.

People assume that the meaning of a song is vested in the lyrics. To me, that has never been the case. There are very few songs that I can think of where I remember the words.

I like the way the stories of my relationships sound to music more than the way they look in print, in gossip columns or in me talking about them in interviews. I think it’s a better way of telling the stories.

Compton got such a legacy in hip-hop.

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.

Doing the box set is one of those things where you get to rewrite your own history to some extent. We could take out some of the songs that we felt weren’t as strong as some of the others, so you look better.

I kinda like the idea of having an album that’s all me.

The darkness, the loop of negative thoughts on repeat, clamours and interferes with the music I hear in my head.

You gotta make sure the listener is listening to you, so if you put it into a song, often times, if the song is striking enough, then you can really deliver the story most effectively while keeping the ear of the listener the whole time.

If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.

Music is in my DNA!

All my records and videos were groundbreaking.

I love music, and after my first experience with movies, I can’t wait to do more.

I don’t know how to function without music. When I’m not making it, I’m listening to it. It gives me courage and takes care of my mind.

I’ve always been a singer. I never really decided I was gonna be a singer. It just kind of – I just sung a lot.

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

Music helps me tell my story. That’s where I can really be heard. But there’s so much focus on the things that aren’t music.

When I found somebody who I fell in love with, it made me feel different than I felt the rest of the day. It was electrifying. That’s what inspired the ‚Off to the Races‘ melodies. That’s one of the times when you’re feeling electrified by someone else and they make you happy to be alive.

In Hawaii, some of the biggest radio stations are reggae. The local bands are heavily influenced by Bob Marley.

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

If it’s illegal to rock and roll, throw my ass in jail!

I knew the second I finished the first record – ‚House Of Balloons‘ – and had all this material leftover that a trilogy would be best.

I wanted to be Gerry Mulligan, only, see, I didn’t have any kind of technique. So I thought, well, baritone sax is kind of easier; I can manage that – except I couldn’t afford a baritone, so I bought an alto, which was the same fingering.

The songs are my lexicon. I believe the songs.

Through Kurt I saw the beauty of minimalism and the importance of music that’s stripped down.

Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.

Music from my fourth year began to be the first of my youthful occupations. Thus early acquainted with the gracious muse who tuned my soul to pure harmonies, I became fond of her, and, as it often seemed to me, she of me.

It was that famous joke: What’s the last thing the drummer said before he got kicked out of the band? ‚Hey, I wrote a song.‘

I didn’t live at school, I lived where I could and studied what I enjoyed studying. I took what I wanted from that education but was making my first record at the same time. I don’t know anyone from school. I was just leading a different life. I was really interested in writing and other things.

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 that by staying true to myself and making music from my heart, the blessings come.