Jon Bellion Quotes

I love Dilla, and who knows where this beat thing would be without him.

I'm a fan of Bjork, a fan of Premier, you know, those are the first two names that come to my mind. You know, I've learned a lot from every person I've collaborated with, from Madlib to Jean Grae and Hi-Tek, to Mos to DJ Quik, to even somebody like Jermaine Dupri. I've taken something important away from every experience.

I try to get the hip-hop aesthetic, most times without an MC. I don't use a rapper or a DJ to give it the hip-hop style; it's strictly the band that makes that music, which is a lot harder to do.

I'm more into beats than rhymes. I'm a huge fan of anything touched by the Neptunes. Dancing is kind of my thing. I go out with my friends as often as I can on the weekends, and I'm always drawn to girls with rhythm.

I'd love to do a live album, like a little bit old school but still progressive, influenced maybe by more electronic music. I like everything, but I don't know anything about music. So it comes in to a lot of different ingredients. I love hip hop.

For the chorus of 'Secrets,' we used The Romantics' 'Talking in Your Sleep' and 'Pale Shelter' by Tears for Fears. It's like hip-hop: just grab it.

I was making all my own beats, and I really liked sampling stuff, like old '50s and '60s pop and soul and doo-wop records. I was chopping those up and putting loops and drums on them and just rapping over them.

The whole '400 Degreez' album was inspired by what Outkast was doing, Organized Noize. That was what I was listening to around that time.

I learned a lot from working with and watching Knxwledge, seeing how he produces non-stop. He doesn't dwell too long on stuff. He's very simple, using only about two or three elements. I like that in production. Sometimes it doesn't take more than three drums, a melody, the vocal, looping a sample or whatever, just as minimal as possible.

I have a method of working on music: I'll get up in the morning and throw down some drums on my drum machine, and then I'll come back later and try to pop off rhythms to it.

I have found a groove and a combination between originals and mashups that I think works well.

It's not easy to sound like Dilla, but you can make beats like Dilla with your computer, so that's why everybody sounds like Dilla.

I had a boom box with a dual cassette deck and a mic, so I used to make pause tapes. I think a lot of people started like that because it was all I had. I would just take rap records that I liked and just loop the beat by pressing pause and record and make, like, five minutes of these beats.

Bad Name' is just that head-nod, traditional loop over a breakbeat, chopped up, and it sounds like the way I do my thing.

Dilla could flip a boring record and make you feel like you were flying.

People like my beats because of the crazy flow with the hi-hats and the bass.

I think a lot of guys are influenced by 'Pinata.' I fathered a lot of styles off that album.

My first big influences were more hip-hop based - people like DJ Shadow and Four Tet.

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've been a DJ since I was about 13, and I started out as a hip-hop DJ. So I was always playing records that would just get people going. I was just doing parties and high school dances and whatever, and then, progressively, I started making my own music, writing little songs here and there, but it was never anything crazy.

I love the comparison with Aaliyah and Timbaland, because Aaliyah is a legend, and there is a large cinematic feel to Timbaland's sound, but what I do is different.

I don't sit around listening to beats all day. There's so many producers, and so much of it is derivative.

So I was about 19 when I got my first SP-1200, and on that SP-1200, I made 'Bring The Pain' and a few other classic Wu joints.

I was truly honored to work with legendary DJ and producer DJ Premier. I still can't believe I have a track with Premier; it really is one of the best songs I've written in a long time.

I tried to embrace the concept of the sampler as an instrument, looking at how to take it artistically to another place where it can be appreciated, more than just taking someone's song and doing a 4-bar loop.