Vince Staples Quotes

People always want to talk about who I was, but I've always been singing, always been experimenting with pop music.

You're a constant student, as a musician.

My first album was me finding myself and my voice, finding how I sing. I was rolling with the punches because everything was new to me.

I am pretty embroiled in moving on and moving forward with music.

I just really longed to do music that reflected me as an adult and music that I thought was for other adults.

When I first started making music, I didn't really know what I was doing. I just wanted to write songs. I didn't have a concept. I didn't think it through. I was just flailing around doing what comes naturally. It took me a really long time to step back and deal with what I was doing with any kind of perspective or self-awareness.

I prefer to think of myself as a musician who is still learning and trying to do something every time out.

If I had to look at 'Now He Sings'... from outside myself, I see it as a natural part of the growth of the jazz culture, which I've always been so happy - honored, really - to be a small part of.

I'm constantly on my toes and re-examining my own music.

Music is a vital part of my life, and it has been since I was a kid. It helped me find my identity as a person, it helped me find my identity as an artist, and it helped me get in touch with emotions that I didn't know I had.

I really think I've found me finally in the music. You know, I had put an album out before, 'Embrace Me,' and it's been seven years since that. So I was discovering who I was. And I still am discovering, but I think now I know a little bit more of who I am. So that's what's pushing me.

Playing music is a lifetime's work. And if you want to carry on with it, you have to try to better yourself. You have to see where the music can take you.

We groove off of everything, any sort of live show. The inner dialogue you're having with yourself, between you and the music, is for me the search for God.

I don't believe in competing with other actors. I believe the only person you can compete is with yourself. You can only do better work compared to your earlier work.

Just trying to make my music as good as possible and to keep performing and just keep moving.

I feel like I wasn't making music that meant anything to me until I was 26 years old, so I'm realizing that sometimes it takes three years or five years to understand what the point of even making music together is.

Even on tour, where I perform songs from 'City Of Black And White,' I still do songs from 'Nothing Left To Lose.' I never turned my back on that material. On some albums, you change - that's all. The trick is to follow your heart and do what feels right.

When I started to make music I wasn't as serious at first.

I want them to come away with discovering the music inside them. And not thinking about themselves as jazz musicians, but thinking about themselves as good human beings, striving to be a great person and maybe they'll become a great musician.

It is not about writing those hits again. I am sure I could write them, but it is about the sensibilities.

It's nice to be able to backtrack and not be embarrassed by the music you used to listen to.

When Evanescence took time off, I bought a big concert harp and started taking lessons like I was in high school again, which was really, really fun. I felt like I was learning again.

In regard to music, I just think that it's always best to have an attitude of being a perpetual student and always look to learn something new about music, because there's always something new to learn. Don't dismiss something out of hand because you think it's either beneath you or outside of the realm of where your interests lie.

I've done a lot of growing up since the age of 16 and I really wanted that to be reflected in my music.

When I was 19, I joined a rock band, and that's when I began to say, 'Okay, this is something that I could take seriously.' When I came to Minneapolis, it just refined everything.