will.i.am Quotes

In country music, one of the ways we may have gone wrong in the past is trying to be politically correct all the time.

My input for the first 16, 17 years of my life was AM radio, FM radio - pretty mainstream stuff. Rolling Stone was probably as edgy as it got.

We released 'Mad World' as a single because we felt the music press would like it.

Popular music sucks so bad right now.

There are a lot of stuff on the record that I am thinking is generic but actually it is just as good as everybody else who is putting stuff out at the time.

When Phil and I started out, everyone hated rock n' roll. The record companies didn't like it at all - felt it was an unnecessary evil. And the press: interviewers were always older than us, and they let you know they didn't like your music, they were just doing the interview because it was their job.

The only thing that exists to me is commercial pop music.

Ninety percent of all music is always crap, and when too many people decide they're going to have guitar bands, then ninety percent of them are going to be crap. It's just a given law.

It's not for me to determine what a country artist has in common with a hip-hop artist. You go for those with long-lasting careers. And that's what I've had as my target all my life.

I never do releases to try and make or break some contemporary band.

There's always people saying that rock is dead, rock is over. People are always out to kill rock and roll.

People in the media, it makes their day when someone they say is a five-star artist goes platinum.

When the band begins to get a name for themselves, and the writers get assigned to bands, they'll hit somebody who just doesn't like that kind of music, or they love hip hop but hate guitar rock.

I always go for 'SPIN' magazine because I'm such a music buff.

We're real people and we're a band that's been playing on the scene for a long time. We've made a lot of friends, and one enemy we've always had was the NME. They've always basically slated us and they've basically never ever written about the music.

They were marketing me as a teen idol, when the stuff on the record was not what teen idols were doing at the time.

At some point around '94 or '95, 'Rolling Stone' said that guitar rock was dead and that the Chemical Brothers were the future. I think that was the last issue of 'Rolling Stone' I ever bought.

I'm very much interested in music specifically and wanted to make a film about it, but not in an atmosphere of censorship.

Hip Hop has become real constrained. The creative juices and creative flows have been diminished.

There are so many things that are misunderstood or not recognized about my father's music because they've been filtered by people who work for magazines like Rolling Stone.

When I started off in England, HMV or Tower Records would come to meetings and be, like, 'We just don't know what this genre is.' I don't really fit in between Rihanna and Beyonce.

Nothing wrong with pop!

I have never felt in tune with the whole rock industry.

I have a feeling there were many, many successful rock duos that just didn't get attention. That's the fault of the rock press. They are always playing up controversy, scandal, aggravation, and irritation.

What people have to understand is 'Billboard' is a magazine. They're like elected officials - they work for us.