Ari Lennox Quotes

I'm not saying I'm even half as talented or a quarter as talented as any of the people I'm inspired by, but if I hear a beat Busta Rhymes would absolutely kill, I'll use my voice to do a flow similar to his.

I think I can see people wanting to hear more music-music now as opposed to all hip-hop. You know, which I have nothing against hip-hop. I think some of it is really good. But on the other hand, some of the real great artists are just being lost because they're not getting the airplay or anything to make them inspired to record again.

I love knowing that people are connecting to my lyrics, my music and me.

In '96, I was in a very specific place with my own music - I was only listening to beats. You would come to my house, and I would just play beats all day.

Music, of almost any kind, always made sense to me.

50 Cent's a songwriter. He understood and liked my music, but he didn't understand me.

I always loved singing, but I thought it was like drawing - just something you do in your own little corner to calm yourself down. But when my friend, the French songwriter Etienne Daho, listened to my songs, he was so moved that told me that I had to do a demo, share them with the world.

I listen a lot to rap, and I'm inspired to take it, to use it in another way, to get the message across.

I was probably 7 years old when I started playing the guitar and writing some serious songs.

Beats are really inspiring. They always make me want to write something over them.

With L.A. it's like, yeah, there's Death Row and whatever. But I always wanted to know what those artists were sampling. It's how I fell in love with music.

Since I was a little child, I always wanted to do music. That was my passion.

Music was more than just something I enjoyed listening to. I was fascinated by it. I'd watch some of my favourite artists and emulate everything they did.

I was really inspired, working with Odd Future.

I wanted to write songs from the ground up, I wanted to sit at a piano and build around that. But I still have a lot of love for hip-hop, so I want to do more collaborations in that sense.

It took me a long time to stumble upon a sound, and I figured out I wanted to kinda sing rapper's lyrics.

I wanted to be a poet. I fell in love with poetry around eight years old, but not through literature. Instead, it came through hip-hop lyrics and my obsession with reading liner notes. Queen Latifah's 'Black Reign' is the album that stands out the most.

Freddie Mercury made a lot of sense to me even though I didn't understand the lyrics.

It wasn't until 9th grade that I got into music. This guy in school heard me singing around the hallway to girls and stuff. The girls liked it. One day, he was like, 'Come to my crib. I got a studio. Come and record a hook for me.' I recorded the hook on the 'Lovers & Friends' beat - Usher.

I feel close to people like Jimi Hendrix because I connect with his music. Not the man but what he did.

When I know it's like a bass song, I gotta go with my SP-1200.

I think when people listen to music, they can truly feel authenticity. For me personally, as a listener, there's certain songs where I'm just like, 'Man, I know that person was really feeling that.'

As a kid, I was trying to copy what I heard. Namely, I was just listening to producers I looked up to, like 45 King and Marley Marl, and trying to do what they were doing.

I'll take two months off just to listen to records and not do any music so I can absorb all that and then when I go do my music. It's all in me. I'll listen to a different genre every two days or something, study it, 24 hours straight.

A few years ago, I had an interest in making things that felt more like "pieces." That was when I was making a lot of stuff that you could call beats, and it dawned on me that I could say much more nuanced, precise things if I tried to make them more composed. It sounds a bit corny, but I do love the idea that something can make you forget that you're listening and just transport you to somewhere else in your head.