Earl Sweatshirt Quotes

But I've been freestyling and messing around with rhyming since I was 13. That's when I really started listening to hip-hop music.

Big Rube was on my first album and some of my mixtapes. His words are so powerful. I want to speak every word he says into existence. I wanna be a part of that! I wanna be a part of greatness. His wordplay is great to me.

I spent many years trying to write a lot like Ben Folds or John Lennon or Rivers Cuomo. I think that's healthy when you're learning to write and seeing how chords fit together and how songs take shape.

Hip-hop is getting to the point now where they are going to start sounding like Al Jarreau or Bobby McFerrin or some of the other poets. Some of the better rappers can rap real fast without even melodies. It'll get to that same point.

I'm kind of still learning my voice and learning my style.

For the longest time, I was trying to be DJ Shadow, I think. But I slowly developed my own style. It was trial and error, for sure.

I started singing because it was a natural evolution in hip-hop to me. Without Prince, I wouldn't have embraced that. I wouldn't have been able to embrace me.

I used to be mad, at first, that I couldn't sound like Ice Cube. And I think that was probably one of the best things for me.

That's something I can never lose: my love for the art of rap. As I grew older and became more interested in song writing, it just pushed my possibilities further. I always have to have a foot firmly on the floor as a rapper, because that's how I started.

When I was 13, before I got in high school, I was writing mad raps. I didn't really know if it was good or not, so for a year, I just held them. When I got in high school, I started spittin' bars.

I still to this day get the most inspiration from rap lyrics.

I love rap, and I try to write a bit like a rapper, to have a flow.

If you're really a rapper, you can't stop rapping.

When children start to speak they find their own voice by imitating the sounds around them. It would follow that bands do the same. Bands will find their own voice at some point.

When I turned 19 I kinda realized that I needed to write my own songs instead of singing songs written by other people.

Not everybody is a great rapper; not everybody lives for the art of lyricism.

I still very much appreciate the storytelling of the best rappers.

There's a guy on YouTube named Mac Lethal - he spits hot fire.

A lot of the hip hop artists don't write music. They write words.

I think that rap is narrative, when it's done right.

I have to be able to rap. I don't have the look. I don't have the typical slim-dude, fancy-clothes look. That's not me. I have to be able to rap - there is no other choice, or else I get eaten alive.

Rapping for me is more about being entertaining and giving something back to the fans. I want people to say, 'There goes Pooch holding his own with Consequence, Rick Ross, and Drake.'

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'm pretty sure people thought I was like a dope rapper.

It takes a long time to find your own voice. Along the way, you imitate all the things that influence you - in my case Johnny Cash, Bowie, John Lydon.