OMI Quotes

To me, our music is like Jamaican stuff - if they can't hear it, they're not supposed to hear it. It's not for them if they can't understand it.

If you're not Prince, you're never going to sound like Prince.

My style is all to myself.

What's cool about indie rock is that one band can do effectively the same thing as another band, and one band nails it, and the other one doesn't. I like that elusiveness.

I think a lot of singer-songwriters get compared to each other, but I'd like to think that what I'm doing is special and specific to me.

People say my music is English. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's not me writing English music, but that English music is becoming more like me.

I mean, there are only so many notes. What makes something original is how you put it together.

I do have very solid reggae roots based on the fact that I'm Jamaican, and so that is a part of myself; even if I never do all reggae, it has to come out in some way because that's who I am.

I want to be different, and fashion gives me that outlet to do that.

When I started to make music at the end of the '90s, I saw myself highly influenced by hip-hop and techno, but I wanted to apply these ideas to something from the local sound; something that had identity, that would say who we were and where we came from.

Hip-hop is the only music in the world where you can take any instrument and make it hip hop. It's anybody's music. It's what you make of it. That's for anything you do in life.

My uncle is from Trinidad, so, ever since I was 7, I grew up listening to Soca, the genre that's from there. It's my favorite sound.

Jazz has always been a melting pot of influences and I plan to incorporate them all.

I listen to a lot of reggae.

I think it's kind of difficult to write a good Christmas song because you have a narrow framework of references that you have to work within, and at the same time you want to do something that's personally original and hopefully somewhat unique.

At first, I found the music I was making really hard to find a home for. I felt like my attitude was really British, but not the actual sounds I was making. Back in 2003, when I made 'Galang,' there were no clubs that had an 'anything and everything' attitude.

I am consciously trying not to make it sound Celtic or African.

What is nice about country music today is that most artists are not trying to do something everybody else is doing. They really are trying to develop their own uniqueness.

None of my songs sound the same. None of them. I take R&B beats and put it as a rap song or hip-hop beats and put them as a R&B song. A lot of people are boring. I don't like boring music. Everybody sounds the same, like they copying.

I make a lot of my own clothes. I don't like wearing the same thing everybody else wears.

When we started Aventura, I think a lot of - the reason why we became so successful besides, you know, doing good music, was also the fact that it was unique and different and never done.

I want to show my versatility and how diverse I am, how I approach the track, my rhythm, my melodies. It's something different. Sometimes, the things I do haven't ever been done.

My parents are from Jamaica, and I love reggae music.

I love the U.K. folk scene. In the States, nobody knows what to do with me. There's still a very narrow definition of Americana.

I was so big, so I had to always come up with my own creations. Like, when I would do junior prom and stuff, I would have stuff specially made or added to my outfit. I definitely was always into trying to do something a little over and beyond.