Nicky Jam Quotes

Late 20th century music was a really important thing. It changed the world, and I'm part of that, and now I'm part of the museum that celebrates that.

Michael Jackson fundamentally altered the terms of the debate about African American music. Remember, he was a chocolate, cherubic-faced genius with an African American halo. He had an Afro halo. He was a kid who was capable of embodying all of the high possibilities and the deep griefs that besieged the African American psyche.

Everything Michael Jackson does on stage is exactly right.

None of the jazz greats made music for the purpose of you going to check out music before them. Michael Jackson didn't make music so you could go check out Sam Cooke.

Michael Jackson fundamentally altered the terms of the debate about African American music.

The Beatles were just the beginning of everything music could be, just like the Stones I was Rolling along like a ship lost out on the sea.

The rise of salsa was such an important time in musical history, not just in Latin music but music in general, because these guys created a new sound.

Twenty years from now, will we listen to Lady Gaga? No. She might think she is making a stand for the freaks and the weirdos. But they're not going to have any decent music to play, are they?

When you talk about *NSYNC or Backstreet Boys - we were like the New Kids, and New Kids were like the Bee Gees. But Girl Radical will be the first ones, and that's a crazy idea. That's what got us so excited.

Without David Bowie, popular music as we know it pretty much wouldn't exist.

I think that there's always great music being made. Always has been, always will be.

If we look at music history closely, it is not difficult to isolate certain elements of great potency which were to nourish the art of music for decades, if not centuries.

To be in one band that changed the world musically is pretty good, but to be in two bands that changed the world musically, that's amazing.

No, I don't think rock 'n' roll will ever fade.

Elvis Presley was the big bang. He was the most influential single figure in the history of American pop culture. He changed the way we looked, thought, dressed, held a guitar. He didn't invent rock & roll, but he defined it in a way that everyone who followed him owes him a debt.

Upcoming composers in Bollywood are falling prey to the volume game, without caring what they are doing to the history of Indian music, and that's something to worry about.

Nothing goes full-circle with music.

Play a jungle record from 1993 to someone in 1989 and it would have sounded like something so new that it would have challenged them to rethink what music was, or could be.

If you look at these bands like The Beatles, they did something that was new for that time, whether it was shocking or just a new direction that they were going.

I remember Elvis as a young man hanging around the Sun Studios. Even then, I knew this kid had a tremendous talent. He was a dynamic young boy. His phraseology, his way of looking at a song, was as unique as Sinatra's. I was a tremendous fan, and had Elvis lived, there would have been no end to his inventiveness.

Nothing affected me until I heard Elvis. Without Elvis there would be no Beatles.

I come from a generation that was surrounded by popular music, but I don't know if anybody's ever going to move the ball forward as far and as fast as the Beatles did.

The things Elvis has done during his career and the things he has contributed and created are really something very important to the music business.

If you look at the history of popular music, the most successful musicians have started out being really marginal and esoteric. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Madonna. Prince. Bruce Springsteen. Fleetwood Mac. David Bowie. Public Enemy. Nirvana.

... so much of what we do now started in 1954 at Sun Records in Memphis Tennessee ... those guys were inventing that stuff (Rock & Roll) ... you can really tell on some tracks ... they were actually afraid at times of what they were playing. But Rock & Roll definitely didn't come before that time; it started right there