Sir Mix-a-Lot Quotes

In January of 1995, my family and I moved to Seattle. Pearl Jam did the first of their live radio broadcasts, Monkey Wrench Radio, along with many other Seattle musicians.

I'm the mold that grunge was grown in.

There's a Kiss through-line to a lot of the music that came out of Seattle, and it hasn't been talked about a lot.

I was born in '76, but I didn't get into rock until the early '90s when the grunge stuff started coming out.

When I heard Nirvana, it changed my life.

I thought the grunge scene was cool. This is going to sound weird, but I remember doing a concert at a tavern in the mid-'80s with Nirvana.

This is my own little rock theory: In my mind, Nirvana slayed the hair bands. They shot the top off the poodles.

I grew up on, and kind of came of age, during the grunge movement and was introduced to Neil Young and Bob Dylan and grew up on that path.

Punk helped musical fringes get attention. Stuff like Nirvana could never have happened without it.

Nirvana was happening when I was 14, kind of the perfect age. Growing up in Anacortes, Washington, it was close enough to Seattle that it seemed like a local thing.

When we came out, the kind of music that was popular was Nirvana, Soundgarden and Alice In Chains, all that stuff. That was when we released our second album, 'Images And Words', and it was something people werent used to hearing maybe, and it sort of rose above all that somehow, being progressive, or whatever.

As far as the grunge thing, there are three bands from Seattle that I would call true grunge.

When 'Nevermind' came out, my roommate had the CD. At first, I actually thought, 'This is too polished and commercial.' It was a little off-putting. But then I was like, 'This is the best music ever.' It felt so close to what I wanted to do.

Nirvana was like that- Nirvana was like the only band to come out of that- it was like the same thing, Seattle was like this whole scene and it was like this big scene that was thrust upon America.

People misinterpret my emotions towards Nirvana because I've said things about how something happened with grunge that took a little bit of fun out of things. It's no offense to Nirvana; they were one of the greats, obviously. But something died there, too, and we haven't quite gotten the groove back.

When 5150 came out rock was king. Post Nirvana and Pearl Jam 1996 is a different story.

Bands from Akron have a sense of humor and don't tend to take themselves too seriously.

When it comes to grunge or even just Seattle, I think there was one band that made the definitive music of the time. It wasn't us or Nirvana, but Mudhoney. Nirvana delivered it to the world, but Mudhoney were the band of that time and sound.

I listened to all types of music, and obviously when I got to Seattle I was very much aware of the music scene there.

I absolutely think the Seattle grunge sound was instrumental to my music education.

'Ten' by Pearl Jam is still by far one of my favorite albums and is a big part of what inspired me to learn guitar.

When Soundgarden formed, we were post-punk - pretty quirky.

That was a time when I did love music, I couldn't get enough of what was going on. Maybe it was Nirvana that brought me back. I guess it was a comfort because something that sounded so right - and non-commercial - had become so influential, so immediately.

Nine Inch Nails was born out of Cleveland, Ohio, with me and a friend in a studio working on demos at night. Got a record deal with a small, little label, went on tour in a van, and a couple years later found that somehow we touched a nerve, and that first record resonated with a bunch of people.

I think Kurt Cobain and Nirvana represent this giant wave that came crashing in and turned music on its head again, and there's definitely something to be said for that.