Jidenna Quotes

Even if the production doesn't feel African, the vocal delivery - singing through your nose. Specifically, Highlife music from Nigeria. That was the first music I ever heard as a child. So singing through my nose is something I do often, and that's directly rooted in my heritage.

The music we're playing now is based on my heritage, which is Russian, Romanian and Hungarian.

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.

I've always been interested in any kind of great music, and African music is, I think, the source of it all.

What you have to understand is that blues... it's in a line from the oldest forms of African music. If you're playing it like it's an echo of the past, it would be a lot less exciting, but this music lives today.

My mum is from Ghana, and she used to play highlife music in the house, and my dad used to listen to music.

I grew up in the area where we had Three 6 Mafia, and Playa Fly, and 8Ball & MJG. My parents and my family used to listen to it. I learned from them there, and got more into it - listening to the beat of songs, and just learning more about music.

Listening to all these different musical genres from all over the world and listening to my father's record collection, the Irish folk influences from home. Of course they're all in there somewhere hiding within the lyrics and melodies. But rap music was the biggest influence on my way of writing and my performing.

I started producing in California, and they called it mob music. When I moved to Atlanta, the sound was different. People in Atlanta didn't like to rap over West Coast beats. So I had to make adjustments to what was going on in the South.

When I first heard the minstrel banjo - I played a gourd first - I almost lost my mind. I was like, Oh, my god. And then I went to Africa, to the Gambia, and studied the akonting, which is an ancestor of the banjo, and just that connection to me was just immense.

Some people's parents listened to the Beatles... but my family is Alquimia, Celia Cruz, and Carlos Vives - this old, rich Colombian music. I loved hearing that while I was growing up.

I had been exposed to classical music my whole life; even before I was born.

My music comes from my personal background.

I would find myself being inspired by things that I've heard as a kid: Nigerian music or African music, some French music or some Jamaican music. When it's time for music to be made, it's almost like my ancestors just come into me and then it's them.

Whenever I've not known what to do, I've always gone back to the Carter Family because there was nothing like singing with my aunts and my mom to my grandma.

Really, I listen to more hip hop probably than most other things. That's where I get a lot of my influence from because it's so eclectic. So that's what I love.

So much music in Africa was created for specific moments, written for rituals or for a funeral or for challenges, thousands of years ago, and these rhythms are still used.

I grew up listening to a lot of emo music, a lot of rock music, a lot of rap music, a lot of trap music, funk, everything.

My whole British culture in growing up is still with me for sure. I'm very grateful for that.

I grew up listening to a lot of hiphop music and R'n'B. Bands like A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Big Daddy Kane, Boogie Down Productions, Cypress Hill, New Edition, Bob Marley, Prince, Stevie Wonder, and a lot of Spanish music.

I think that the sound that the world knows as trap music is the sound that Gucci and I created.

My heritage is a huge part of everything I do; it is, after all, part of what has made me who I am.

Yo Gotti had some influence on me for sure. I would say Three 6 Mafia, too.

London's been really good to me - England as a whole - but the Scots and the Irish especially are very appreciative because that's kind of where it all came from.

Intellectual development was paramount to my father, of course, but he was hardly a geek. He was a man who happened to be of a certain Southern culture and a certain age, and his talents and tastes had been molded accordingly.