Kris Wu Quotes

When Sonic Youth writes music, we write everything in a very communal way. It doesn't matter who brought something in initially; it all gets transformed by the band.

Sampling is very important for me. It's the backbone of hip-hop.

A Cat Stevens record isn't just Cat Stevens' ideas. It's Cat Stevens and all the musicians who play with Cat Stevens, right?

Everyone who makes music is a good collaborator at their foundation because in order to make music, you have to connect to it in a way that other people can't.

I love working with different musicians in the studio, that's a real joy working with someone for the first time.

I wrote my first song, 'Conversion', to this little hip-hop instrumental. I went to an open-mic, plugged my iPod into the P.A., and sang over the beat.

I love sampling, and RZA loves sampling, too.

Making music with people is a very intimate process.

There were a certain amount of people that were down with me, and we would just sit in the room and make music.

Future's the guy, like, where, if I send him some beats while he on the road, and there's a pack of beats that he really like, if there's a new vibe or new wave, he's like, 'Man, keep feeding me more. Feed me more of this every day.'

My collaborative albums are always way more enjoyable to make.

Sonic Youth was a collective. There's something fantastic about the idea of making music is a social activity.

So sometimes if I'm working with a rapper, like Ghostface Killah or Nas, producing usually means, in hip-hop, that you make the music. You make the beat, and you give it to them. And they write the rhymes.

A hot producer might not make a hot beat for me. I just love music.

For me, a great show is when there's a great rapport with the band and the audience, and we're all really into it. The first trick is to bring the audience into the band, break the ice, have a life, and be one, so you can enjoy the next hour and a half together.

The moment I made that decision to get in the studio and actually work and study the culture of hip-hop, then everything just started to open up and blossom for me.

Everyone's [ me, Iain Cook and Martin Doherty] equally involved in all the writing. Normally we'll start with a sample or a drumbeat, or a synth sound or something like that, and that will spark the initial idea. And then we'll write an instrumental sketch of a song, and then we put on a nonsense vocal melody, which is always my favourite bit because it obviously sounds amazing.

To me, I'm always trying to look for the energy, to imagine in being played on the dance floor. I guess that's the most important thing in making music for me.

In the beginning we were creating our music, ourselves, every night . . . starting with a few outlines, maybe a few words for a song. Sometimes we worked out in Venice, looking at the surf. We were together a lot and it was good times for all of us. Acid, sun, friends, the ocean, and poetry and music.

So I'm in the library, and I have keyboards out and my headphones out. Everybody's like, "Mike are you making beats right now?" and I'm like, "Yeah... sorry!"

All the others arts are lonely. We paint alone--my picture, my interpretation of the sky. My poem, my novel. But in music--ensemble music, not soloism--we share. No altruism this, for we receive tenfold what we give.

A lot of producers always say "what direction are you going in?" and I don't know. I'm just doing music. Right now it's going well. It's a little slow, but it's expected because I haven't been in the studio for a minute.

I enjoy writing rhymes and sitting alone in a room listening to beats. It's pretty amazing.

Making a film, you're in a really dark tunnel and the only kind of illumination is the shared experience you're having with your fellow cast and director.

I hope we [with Patrick Leonard] can come up with something orchestral with some spoken material. And I also, God willing, hope that perhaps another record of songs also might emerge, but one never knows.