A. R. Rahman Quotes

In the case of, like, Childish Gambino, he is someone who is a writer by trade, so he is very meticulous about how he writes his ideas. I don't do this with a lot of artist, but he would give me a treatment that he wants to do, and I'll go off that; then I'll give him feedback and pitch him my ideas.

Jay Z and Biggie and Nas always listened to my direction. They listened and they applied it and I also listened to their opinions and that's why the records came out so good.

Some people say I do it too much, but I'm always asking the artist questions. Sometimes - especially with new artists - you can see they're compromising in their mind. You see that look when they're listening to a vocal take and there's hesitation. And I'll be like, 'Are you sure you don't want to do this again?'

When I'm making a song that's very Grimes, it just feels very insular and it feels weird to have someone else do something on it.

And ultimately the people who produce my records, they know that they're here to serve the purpose of me expressing who I am at this period of time and augmenting that or pulling it forward and I love that process.

I write the music because I can't really write lyrics. But I can write chords like Robin's never heard of. So I provide the music for them to add the lyrics to.

I'm good at melody - I'll write the top-line melody and ideal words I want to go with it. But I'm not that good at writing lyrics. I bounce those back and forth with songwriters or someone who can sing.

I've actually thought very little about solo work up until just very recently. Most of it is because in my band, Incubus, it is very much a collaborative effort. I do what I do in the band, and everyone plays their respective parts, but in the end, we are sort of a democratic process.

I have this group of friends that I'll send my scripts to before I send them to a large audience.

What Tim does is, he calls me and sends me the script. And then he sends me a drawing, an illustration of his image of me as the character. It's so great.

I've always wanted to collaborate with Shawn Mendes, he's an amazing artist, but the thing with Shawn is that I won't collaborate... me just sending some beats. It has to be in the studio where we'd both be there recording together.

The only thing I don't write is the guitar solos, but even then I might suggest one or two things.

There's a synergy with Dre and me.

Before I came to WWE, they sent me samples of all of the entrance music, so I told them, 'I don't use this,' and 'I don't use this,' and, 'Please mix music with violin,' and they would make samples, and I would give my opinion, and this would go back and forth until, finally, they made 'The Rising Sun,' and I was really happy to have that.

'Never Forget You' was the first song I co-wrote.

Working with Timbaland, he gives me insight; he throws me different ways to approach the beat, and those extra tips go a long way. I know that he's worked with some of the greats, so it's just motivation. I feel inspired when we're in the booth together.

It might crush a lot of people, but I've never been in the room with an artist that I've written a song for.

I've often said to young songwriters when they want to write with me, 'Let's take a stab at ten songs, and we might get one really good one.'

Me and Thugger could make nine songs in a day and then choose which songs we like the most and think is gonna do something. With other people, it's like, we pick one song, and we hope it's the one.

For the first three years, when I was writing, I was doing sessions with a whole bunch of different people all the time every day until I met Lindy Robbins, who kind of mentored me. And then, once you find that, all the pieces come together.

I feel like I kind of earned my stripes working with The Stereotypes. It was maybe my 6th songwriting session I've ever been to, and they just gave me and a writer I used to write with 3-4 tracks and kinda just let us come up with whatever.

In the 1990s music was a beautiful collaborative process between the composer, lyricist and director. They would exchange ideas and magic used to happen.

My two bits here are that writing is a solitary job but there are times when one needs to discuss the work, and see what's working and what's not.

Every time I act in something, I learn something about what the director is doing. One feeds the other.

I think I learned a lot about collaboration and about joint creativity with other people. It is honestly so much fun and I don't think that I would have had the same album if I had just written it by myself.