Big K.R.I.T. Quotes

My first album didn't come out until I was 27, which in pop years is late, you know. But when it came time to arrange it, I became a kid in a toy shop. I had a harp and a saxophone quartet and a symphony orchestra. I went berserk for a time.

Make your own music. It can be done.

I think I compose as a listener: improvising and listening back excites me because I get to ideas that never would have occurred. Then I bring in the computers and samplers... and I begin to loop and process and change them.

When I do a remix, I try to think about what I don't have in my bag and create something to fill that gap.

I played a lot of keyboards, but I really wanted to produce the sound that was in my head that I was trying to emulate on the keys. I wanted to do it for real. And it makes me look at the keys in a different way. So it's like I'm looking at the guitar and bass more like meat and potatoes and keys like coloring over top of it, you know.

When you're sitting in the basement trying to get on, you have no choice - you've gotta figure out how to make a song: 'I've gotta bang on these buttons until it sounds good.'

I was obsessed with harmonies and how to put songs together in lush soundscapes. But I don't know what it was all about, really.

Really, I just sit down, mess around, and play with sounds.

With 'Slave Ambient', I was writing things on top of loops. Now I really get the structure of the song down, but I leave room for improvisation in the studio.

I don't go into any album with pressing issues. I just try to write songs.

I demo all of my songs on Garage Band, where I pretty much play everything - not very well, but I manage to hammer out a drum beat and a bass idea.

I make records with an open mind, I always have.

Rap is something you can just throw on the skillet and fry up real quick. That's how it comes to me, my train of thought. It's like getting dressed - I don't have to sit down and stare at clothes, I just pick what I like and put it on. But rock, you gotta put it in the oven and let it bake.

I tried several times to get the song right. The tune and the chords that I started with, there really wasn't anywhere else it could go. I stopped fighting it and let it take me away.

'White Rabbit' was mostly done in about two days, the music in about half an hour. The music is a 'Bolero' rip-off and the lyrics a rearrangement of 'Alice in Wonderland.' You take two spectacular hits and throw them together, and it's hard to miss.

When you sample something, you're using the crutch of borrowing chords and melodies from a song that's already great, that's already stood the test of time, that's already special. When you're trying to do it all from scratch, you're writing something brand new that has to stand on its own.

Sometimes I just hit the keyboard in a way I'd like the rhythm of the tracks to sound.

Usually one or two things happen: Either you have an idea straightaway - the sort of sound that you want or the instrumentation or one particular sound that you want to feature - or you don't.

To keep creating something with this type of music, you have to take it out of the box.

If I had a stock of fabulous sounds I would just always use them. I wouldn't bother to find new ones.

If you write songs you have an idea how they're going to sound.

I am an inventor of music.

One of the most frustrating parts about songwriting for me is production, but it makes me want to get better at it and ends up being one of the most rewarding parts of it.

It's very demanding to make up your own music.

I've been really trying to hone the art of songwriting in a way that doesn't follow any sort of guideline.