Labrinth Quotes

I don't like being categorized as a rapper. I make music; I don't just rap.

There are always generic terms like 'Americana', but there are no boundaries as to where it can go.

I was being categorized as some kind of twangy songwriter. And that's just not how I see myself.

People are always defining and re-defining music. My style of playing has been characterized as smooth jazz and acid jazz. I listen as I play; I'm not caught up in defining the type of music I play.

I don't know that my voice ever makes sense anywhere, necessarily. I would sing bluegrass music, and I don't fit in there; I would sing rock music, and I'm probably a little too hillbilly for that. And country, I'm too much rock n' roll for there sometimes.

One of my big fears is people saying my songs are all starting to sound the same.

Deep down inside, I do feel, at times, that I have to prove to people that I'm actually an artist.

I don't think I am a soul singer and definitely don't think that I am a country artist by any stretch.

Everyone has their own journey, and for me, going from singing background to writing songs has truly opened doors for me and has also helped me find myself as an artist in terms of what I want to say and the style of music I want to have.

Some people say I make hip-hop. Others see me as doing EDM. Some people might look at me as a trap artist, but I'm not really stuck to any of those.

Unfortunately it's easy to just label us as part of a Laurel Canyon sound. What we try to do is to be unique.

I don't think I have a genre at all.

I really enjoy doing remixes, but I don't want to be known as just a 'remix artist' for the rest of my career.

Just because I front the band or we play bigger stages now, it doesn't mean we somehow suddenly changed the way we approach things. We all still view what we do as indie and alternative in terms of how we execute it, even if the actual music we make is more pop than our previous projects.

When I first came out, country wouldn't touch me because I was way too rock, and rock wouldn't touch me because I was definitely country.

After my grunge phase, I started opening my horizons and listening to more electronic stuff. I got into Radiohead, specifically 'Amnesiac' - my brother gave me that album.

In any event, I'm proud to wear the badge of jazz vocalist if that's what people want to call me; but at the same time, there are many other things I like to do.

I hope our legacy will be enduring and that people think of us as an important band. But I think Ricky's guitar playing, our style of writing, the fact that we had men and women in the band and gay and straight, I think it's an important band, and the way we wrote by jamming, we really had a different approach.

When all my friends were into punk, I'd be singing versions of soul ballads. I thought, 'Oh my God, I don't want them to know I'm doing this.' But I really enjoyed singing those songs.

People grapple with labeling me as hip-hop, R&B, or pop, and it's interesting to me. I'm just making music.

There's been a time where I was like, I wanna be a folk singer; no, I wanna sing soul. I want to sing classical music. I want to sing R&B. I want to be on Broadway. I just wanna sing. Whatever comes out of my mouth, that's what I want to do.

I've been criticized for doing so - crossover music. But I never claimed to be a pure dancehall artist.

I think my music covers a broader sound than just 'Tropical House'... My goal is to simply be a great producer in my own right without being pigeonholed.

At The Drive In came out in a period of time when Stereophonics and Limp Bizkit were huge. And there was this dark grey void - I'm not saying we filled it - but we were just a different colour at the time.

I could have pigeonholed us and wrote a whole record like 'Pumped Up Kicks,' and we would have been this breezy, nostalgic West Coast Beach Boys recreation band. That's not the type of writer I am. Once I try one style, I move on.