Lou Gramm Quotes

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

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

I'm a singer and a writer first. I started to rap by accident, being playful.

I'll hear a beat and think, 'How can I make this a banger?' I'll write the lyrics on my phone or on a piece of paper, and either way, it's going to be a slapper.

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 started writing rhymes first and then put it to the music. I figured out I could lock it to the beat better if I heard the music first. I like to get a lot of tracks, put the track up and let the music talk to me about what it's about.

I'm trying to escape the shackles of a pen and a pad. I've sat in sessions with Jay-Z where he doesn't write anything down. He'll come up with the most incredible triple entendre, all in his head - it's amazing.

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.

Beats are really inspiring. They always make me want to write something over them.

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 started listening to The-Dream a lot. That's when I really got into writing songs. I like the way he put lyrics and makes his songs. So I was like, 'All right,' and I just started writing. That's when I started wanting to be a songwriter.

I always wrote poems when I was a little girl, and I loved hip hop music, and I kind of just started writing poems over beats, and that's when I started rapping.

I don't really write. I'm an on-the-spot type of person. This beat, let's listen to it; let's vibe. And then I'll do a melody, and then we'll go back and do it.

Most people when they rap usually have their homies in the studio who rap with 'em, but they homies don't usually be producers.

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

But then you have to write a song, so at that point, I picked up the reins and started to write lyrics.

It's pretty amazing to write under any circumstances when someone gives you an assignment to write a song, even if it doesn't get accepted. I've written songs a couple of times, some for Disney, that haven't actually ended up in their films, but then you're left with a song forever.

When I recorded my solo album, 'Keep It Hid,' in 2008, I'd gotten more interested in songwriting, inspired by reading Charles Bukowski and connecting with unfancy, interesting language.

I find it harder to write the lyrics afterwards because then you're just trying to fit them into something that's already there.

I write a lot of rhymes, but I don't really end up using them a lot of times, and I end up just freestyling. I like to write music, though, more than I like to freestyle, to be honest.

It's really such a personal journey, making a record, but even more so writing the songs.

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.

Song Sung Blue took a lot of compressing and refining, and it has one of my favorite lyrics.

There's two facets to writing a song. There's you sitting in your room writing the sentiments of the song; the lyrics, the melody and the changes, and then there's the part where you go into the studio and you put clothing on it.

I get the music, I get the beats. And I go to the studios and write the lyrics.