Big Smo Quotes

My sound is a mix between pop, hip-hop, and R&B. It's a good collaborative effort of all three.

The biggest misconception about us is that we're just a rock band. We think our music is a cross-section of many genres; a hybrid of what the six of us have grown up on.

I mix up all styles on my albums because that is what music is about now.

I really just blend like rock, R&B and rap together to create a sub-genre, but it's very versatile.

A lot of what I listened to growing up was blues, but also folk and indie music. So there's this marriage of songs that structurally are quite bluesy. Sound-wise, there's a lot of indie as well. But you can't really say I'm pop-blues, because that's insulting to blues. It just can't exist.

One thing about Foster the People is that it's taking pieces of a lot of different genres of music and kind of melding them together.

I like the idea of blending genres.

The music is at this weird intersection of dance music and indie music. It's not quite dancey enough to do a full-blown DJ set, and it wasn't quite rock enough for a rock band. But I guess it's what makes us unique - drawing from a lot of different influences.

Three-6 Mafia, we were always doing different kinds of things, and we like rock music, we like whatever - not saying they was rock, but they had a little rock-n-roll with some of their music, a little rock with it.

We have such a mixture now, such a fusion of different genres.

I guess one thing that makes my music stand out is that it is quite hard to determine what genre it is.

My music has always been sort of in between categories. Sometimes record stores - back when there were record stores - they'd put my records in the country music section, but other record stores would put my records in the pop or even the rock section. As long as it's in the store somewhere, I'm OK with it.

They believed you can't mix rock, country, and rap, and that crossover is dead. I always knew it would work. And it will always work as long as you're really into it and like what you're doing.

I think the great country songs mixed with some of that bluegrass instrumentation - and surrounding all that with a little bit of a rock vibe and energy - is the kind of music I make.

But the idea of taking things and mixing them together is what I do in my music. I take hip-hop, R&B, pop, dance, funk and soul and mix it all together to get my own sound.

One of my problems is I'm not really sure if I slot into rock or not. I've always tried to combine world music, folk, jazz, blues and rock, and have done since Traffic.

I've been criticized for doing so - crossover music. But I never claimed to be a pure dancehall artist.

Well, 'Crunk Rock' doesn't mean rock. Initially when I started the album, I did collaborate with a bunch of rock musicians and producers. But as I started to have time to free my mind and catch different vibes, it started to mean something different.

I just take rock songs and mix it with hip-hop and a little bit of R&B.

I think pure country music includes rock and roll .. I've never been able to get into the further label of country-rock .. how can you define something like that ? - I just say this: It's music. Either it's good or it's bad; either you like it or you don't

Country music artists are staying true to their roots, keeping it country but throwing a little bit of rock flair in there which I think is a good thing.

When we started Poco, we were too country for rock, and we were too rock for country.

I do think that some bands seem to be dabbling in the rock-hip-hop world and are not necessarily serious about it.

To break R&B into subcategories does a disservice to the music. I like to live in a zone where I can do whatever I want, where I don't have to worry about genre.

We have been trying to play a lot of different kinds of music, and probably the next album will go back more towards the direction where you couldn't classify each song as a certain kind of music. This album you can.