Mark Ronson Quotes

Two records put me over the top with hip-hop. One of them was 'Planet Rock,' and the other had no lyrics - it was called 'Numbers,' from a group called Kraftwerk. Every kid in the 'hood in New York and New Jersey was popping, locking, and breaking to that record. It was the hottest track on the street at the time.

I was first influenced by a friend in fifth grade when he brought a Walkman to school and was listening to 'Paradise City' by Guns 'N Roses, which he had concealed within his hoodie. He put the headphones over my ears and I was completely blown away by what I heard. I'll never forget that.

My dad is from Queens. I remember visiting as a kid. My grandparents grew up here. All the actors I respected were coming out of here. All the hip-hop I was listening to - Beastie Boys, A Tribe Called Quest, Biggie, Wu Tang - was coming out of New York. I'm just into it.

I kind of idolized older punk-rock and hip-hop bands, and I was, like, 15 when I started the Beastie Boys. And what business did we having doing that at that age?

I occasionally rapped along to some homegrown Korean rap. And then a friend introduced me to Wu-Tang and played me 'Enter the 36th Chambers.' It was very shocking. And then I started to look for different albums. This was pre-Internet, so it's hard to find the music, and it was even harder to find music videos.

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.

I'm definitely inspired by old hip-hop.

The youth is hungry for good music; I feel responsible and glad that I can be an agent who can mentally, emotionally stimulate them to listen to music outside of cinema.

Hip-hop music was something I grew up with, it was something that I loved since I was a little kid, and it's something that I chose to partake in an early age.

I like to go on YouTube to see the underground sounds, what the kids are listening to, and kind of gauge my music around that.

I realized the power of hip-hop. I realized how influential this music and this culture are.

I listen to my early Gang Starr interviews, I'm like, damn I was really trying to sound like a New Yorker then.

When I started forming my own taste, there was a period in high school when I listened to only rap and hip-hop, like A Tribe Called Quest.

When the Black Lips sent a track over to me, I thought it sounded like a Beastie Boys track, the way the singer was singing and flowing on it. He was right in the pocket.

My school had a radio show, and when I first decided to become a rapper, I was on there, and I would, like, freestyle.

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.

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

I love listening a lot and I listen to all sorts of songs, old and new. But the real inspiration has to come from within.

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.

I can't see any separation between my music and my life. I play pretty much race music: its about what happened to my father, to me, and what can happen to my kids.

I'm a kid from New York, so urban life reflected into art and music was around me and accessible and tangible.

New York has inspired more remarkable music than any other city I can think of.

Oh, my other goal was that I wanted to talk about this area and this time in history. I wanted to talk about growing up in Oakland, a white kid, from this kind of generation of broken homes and listening to hip-hop.

Well before I was rapping. I was just a regular kid in school. I just liked to chill my friends and play games and stuff like that. One day at school my friends were freestyling at the lunch table and thats where it all started.

When I was a kid, I would go to the record store, where there was a bin of things they didn't know quite how to classify. Those were my choices. That's where you would find Captain Beefheart or an early electronic album.