Rick Famuyiwa Quotes

I used to love the Wu-Tang Clan. They took my school by storm, by which I mean the three kids in my year who listened to hip-hop. I skipped lectures to go and buy their second album, 'Forever', and then rushed home to listen to it.

When I was sitting at home watching 'Yo! MTV Raps' as a kid, seeing the bright jackets excited me.

I actually heard hip-hop before I saw a movie in a movie theater. I heard hip-hop first, at the tender age of seven, so that came first. I didn't see a movie until I was eight.

When you're riding with your mom, and you're a kid, you'd listen to 'Dear Mama' and the radio friendly records. I used to sneak and listen to Too $hort.

I'm a big hip-hop fan since being a kid. It was the first music that spoke to me and made me feel like, 'Yeah.'

My first albums as a little kid were Elton John's 'Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,' Simon and Garfunkel's 'Greatest Hits' - and 'Workingman's Dead.' How many other people still listen to the music they liked at age 12?

My dad raised me on everything from his music to Stevie Wonder to A Tribe Called Quest. I learned the 'Midnight Marauders' album in and out.

I would love to say I grew up on 2Pac and The Beatles, but I didn't.

You can be hip-hop to the max, but you still know 'Sweet Home Alabama.'

I love Bruce Springsteen's writing, but I grew up on '90s hip hop, like Tribe Called Quest.

I've always sung in the shower and I watched a lot of 'Rage' when I was young.

The first album I bought, I didn't even buy it. My grandma got Mike Jones and Bow Wow's 'Wanted' a little later. Matter of fact Ying Yang Twins' 'U.S.A. Still United' was the first album, but Mike Jones was the first album I really love.

When I was up in New York, the first record my parents bought me was the Terror Squad record with 'Lean Back.'

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with Shania Twain. I would always go sing the song 'Honey I'm Home.' I was, like, 12, and I'm singing about coming home from work and PMS and stuff.

Anybody under the age of forty knows hip-hop, gospel and R&B pretty well, and it's all a part of what we consider to be 'black music.' There is a natural synergy between the three.

I remember, when I was a kid, listening to the radio and hearing 'Big Bad John' by Jimmy Dean - and it just blew me away. I used to sit there and call the radio stations and request that song. And then the Beatles were obviously out already, but I really didn't know about the Beatles.

I still love it. I love lots of other music, too, and always have, but punk's the soundtrack of my youth. I think you never escape the music you're listening to and seeing when you're seventeen, eighteen, nineteen years old.

I wanted to appeal to people who've never really listened to hip-hop or really given it a chance before. I've also tried to incorporate all my favorite lifestyle things in the music. Of course, 'Fashion Killa' is one of peoples' favorites because it just expresses how much I like fashion.

I only know the lyrics to songs that I listened to between the ages of 11 and 15.

I will always love the Clash, because I loved them so much when I was fourteen, and I love how you can start a conversation with almost literally any dude about the Clash.

I think the most exciting thing is that you expect people our age to know the music, but actually a lot of kids know the music, and if anything is left, we have left really good music, and that's the important part, not the mop-tops or whatever.

I grew up listening to Jay-Z, and I think the first time I really became obsessed with learning and thinking about lyrics was when I started listening to rap; I was 11, 12, and started becoming aware of music beyond the familiar.

I think the first album I bought was The Jackson Five, but the first CD I was given was 'Cotton-Eyed Joe,' the single! Bless my mum - don't know what she was thinkin'!

I always loved the way music made me feel. I did sports at school and all, but when I got home, it was just music. Everybody in my neighborhood loved music. I could jump the back fence and be in the park where there were ghetto blasters everywhere.

I think I get a lot of ideas from when I was a kid, listening to Casey Kasem's 'American Top 40.'