Jose James Quotes

I try to make all my songs good. I don't ever write one to finish one. A lot of protest songs end up that way, driven by some kind of emotional response.

Marvin Gaye is one of my favorite revolutionaries. He spoke from his heart, his mind. That's what I want to do.

When I discovered Gil Scott-Heron, I discovered a musical hero, a man who spoke baritone truth to power over jazzy funk at a time when funky music was primarily about shake, shake, shaking your booty.

Bob Dylan was the source of pop music's unpredictability in the Sixties. Never as big a record-seller as commonly imagined, his importance was first aesthetic and social, and then as an influence.

There's a similarity between European and North African folk musics.

So, in some ways, the political songs tend to be a bit more like reportage, whereas the love songs tend to be like novels, you can pick them up off the shelf and go into them any time.

I put together the influences of my life in as clear a way as I possibly can, in the same way that Beethoven or Schoenberg or Bach put their influences together.

From chain gangs to folk songs to intelligent soul, America has created musicians dedicated to truth, justice, and a better American Way.

I grew up listening to everything. You know, from Argentinean folk music, tango, jazz, rock, just everything.

You shouldn't listen to my music for political messages.

I think that there are artists of different genres whose calling is to use their art to hope to affect and better the human condition - whether it's System of a Down, or Rage Against the Machine, or Public Enemy, or the Clash, Bruce Springsteen, or Pete Seeger. It's a group that I'm proud to be counted among.

This is the thing about hip-hop music and where people get it most misconstrued: It's all hip-hop. You can't say that just what I do is hip-hop, because hip-hop is all energies. James Brown can get on the track and mumble all day. But guess what? You felt his soul on those records.

I don't sing white; I don't sing black - I sing Bronx. When I sing 'Ruby Baby,' I'm rolling like Jimmy Reed. I wanted to communicate like Hank Williams and groove like Jimmy Reed.

A lot of songs we've written have been political, but they're also personally political.

Sometimes music isn't the way to talk politics, you know?

Thinking about the artists I've loved through the years, my favorites are the ones who've made music with cultural, societal and political significance.

There's a lot of anger in 'Queen of Denmark,' and that's me getting political.

You can put the Beatles and the Rolling Stones in the same category, but the types of music, the colors each band evokes, are completely different. It's the same with Mozart and Beethoven - they express two very different aspects of music.

'Black Skinhead' almost got deaded because it was too much like a soccer song.

We've never been as active politically as we have been as artists. But politics always brush up against the arts, oh, about every four years in this country.

Growing up, I listened to a lot of American singer/songwriters, so a lot of Tom Waits, Paul Simon - also Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan. And bands like Vampire Weekend.

I think Marvin Gaye is one of the greatest American music icons. His 'What's Going On' is as fresh today as when he did it.

I grew up with all different genres of music, and I want to include that in my production as well.

Personally more so than shock, I think, rap music has to be born of rebellion.

The New Lost City Ramblers are a very good comparison, actually. They really took the music seriously, and we take the music very seriously. But we don't take ourselves seriously at all.