Diplo Quotes

You know, jazz is the mother of all American music. R&B and pop and rap and everything are the branches on the main tree of the life of music, American music, which is jazz.

I love Erykah Badu. Every time I listen to her music, I'm, like, laying out all the instruments in the song, like, how I would loop it.

When I started playing the bass, I became kind of fascinated by it and started investigating various styles of bass playing, and I was really struck with funk music, mainly American funk music - Stanley Clarke, Funkadelic and that kind of stuff. That comes out in a couple of songs like 'Barbarism Begins at Home.'

I think there's always been progressive R&B music.

I really like R&B more than rap.

I've been sampled at least 71 times. Me, James Brown and George Clinton, we're the ones who've been sampled the most.

I want to do a darker, pop soul kind of feel.

When you scratch the soul of hip-hop, you find R&B and funk but also reggae.

I honed in on a great time, the Motown era, the '60s and '70s. That type of music has always been a staple in my life.

I'm a hip-hop kind of guy, but to be honest with you, I could listen to R&B all day. Give me some slow jams, and I'm a happy person.

James Brown was one of the first artists who found four bars that he liked and played them the entire way through, and then he just added to it vocally.

There were a lot of R&B groups that were my heroes, but the funny thing about my career and the way it went and where it went, at first I didn't really want to do pop music. I was a little bit more into jazz and R&B.

The sound of the '90s, to me, is a combination of soul and street - it's a feeling.

My pops and my mom started playing Marvin Gaye and the Isley Brothers and all these people, but at the same time, they always had Snoop on right behind it in the same mix.

I think with me and the type of music that I'm trying to make, it's always going be soulful because I grew up listening to different types and variations of soulful melodies and jazz, but experimenting with different types of stylistic souls.

I just wanted to experiment with the bass, and my main influence from Jaco Pastorius inspired me to write music in a certain way.

I listen to a lot of Solange. I love old-school as well.

I grew up listening to T-Pain and The-Dream, and they were doing that thing, rapping and singing at the same time. That's where I get it from.

Rag 'N' Bone Man is for everybody, like Wu Tang is for the children.

In general, I love dance-pop music with some soul and a dash of R&B.

From a musical standpoint, I was inspired by '90s hip hop, with a lot of drums and the tempos. I'm always inspired by David Bowie and Prince.

I started with soul music and icons like Aretha Franklin and Etta James and then moved to R&B and artists such as Erykah Badu and Lauryn Hill. Electronic music came later on, when I was in high school and I was really influenced by artists like Skrillex and Major Lazer.

I say that I do soul, R&B music. I have so many influences, from Billie Holiday, Nina Simone to Stevie Wonder and Prince and even Al Green and Bjork. And a lot of hip hop music has influenced me a lot - you know - De La Soul and Digital Underground and A Tribe Called Quest.

The best music to dance to is my music! Haha! I say anything that speaks to you. I personally enjoy dancing to hip-hop, R&B music, EDM/trap music.

If you take 'Nothin' But a G Thang' by Dr Dre, that could also be an R&B record. 'Bonita Applebum' by A Tribe Called Quest could even be a jazz record. 'Bring Da Ruckus,' you gotta call it hip-hop.