Jake Paul Quotes

I freestyled the hook to 'Target.' I got into cadence and then it sparked the idea.

Lyrically and melodically, Drake was definitely a big influence of mine.

When I first started making music, I was pretty drawn to hip-hop beats wrapped together with super-good lyrics. The most important thing in that is wordplay, so that stayed with me when I started writing songs.

I feel like with a lot of Madlib's beats, they are made for storytelling. I feel like when I'm working on stuff with him, I can really get into the storytelling aspect mode of my flow.

I think I'm influenced a lot by Drake in specific ways in my writing.

I wanted to be a poet. I fell in love with poetry around eight years old, but not through literature. Instead, it came through hip-hop lyrics and my obsession with reading liner notes. Queen Latifah's 'Black Reign' is the album that stands out the most.

My favorite artist was probably Jay-Z. He's the one who inspired me to start writing music. He's a wordsmith. He's very clever. He uses a lot of similes and metaphors. He's a beast of a rapper.

I fell into lyric writing because of music. I backed into it.

Just knowing how to rap doesn't necessarily mean that you're a good songwriter.

Usually, my rhymes are just in my head. I start off with a theme, and once I start rapping and writing and singing, the chorus and all that, it just starts flowing. Then it's done in about an hour! I write a lot of songs.

I've always been jealous of rappers, because they can fit so many words into a song and tell a story with lots of details. But when you're a songwriter, you have to fit the words to the melody and you can't fit as much in. I'm just a big fan of storytelling.

I started as a songwriter and wanted to be like Leonard Cohen. I've always seen my stories as enlarged songs.

A lot of the hip hop artists don't write music. They write words.

Big Rube was on my first album and some of my mixtapes. His words are so powerful. I want to speak every word he says into existence. I wanna be a part of that! I wanna be a part of greatness. His wordplay is great to me.

I was never just a 'fill in 16 bars on a beat' rapper. I was making real songs from the jump.

As a lyricist, you love to hear other great lyrics or other great concepts.

I've just always been around great songwriters. To me, they were the standard.

I'm not tryin' to come off as the best lyricist.

I listen a lot to rap, and I'm inspired to take it, to use it in another way, to get the message across.

When I found Freestyle Fellowship, I started getting into the construction of rap. You get better at it the more you do it; you figure out the science and the math behind it.

Lyrics are really, really hard, I think, or at least they're really hard for me. Some people can channel lyrics faster. I find them very hard to find, so because of it, they take me a long time, and I really think about them.

Catchy lyrics are being given more importance.

If there's a track that's rhyme friendly, the verse will basically write itself. If the track is less rhyme friendly, you have to put forth a little more effort to get the song out.

It was actually working with Kendrick Lamar that pushed me further into the act of songwriting, specifically.

I say if you don't write your lyrics, then you can't be the best rapper alive. Not at all. You can be one of the best artists, especially in rap, you gotta write everything yourself.