Tech N9ne Quotes

I wrote 'Don't Stop' just like I wrote 'Pumped Up Kicks' - I didn't try to make either a hit. I just wanted to write a song I liked.

You can only really sing about what you know; at least, I can.

There is no way I'll ever write an album for Avril Lavigne or Christina Aguilera. I just couldn't do it. There is no way I could ever do it because my musical process is about being directly involved with whatever I'm going through in life.

If you look at the content of songs people write, it's usually about the things they know best.

I started rapping before anybody had ever bought a car from it. It was truly about the art form and the culture, more so than now, where it's a successful way to make money. Back then you had to be doing it because you liked it.

Hip-hop don't have no fresh energy, none at all. It's money driven, everybody tryin' to make that cheque, nobody putting art in their albums any more.

I think I take little pieces of inspiration, then kind of do what's real to me and what's going on in my life or what I observe from other people's experiences and hope other people connect with it, too.

As a songwriter, it's very hard to listen to music that's not coming from the heart and soul, personally.

What I've learned over the years is that the craft of songwriting is trying to take the personal and make it universal - or in the case of telling a story, taking the universal and making it personal.

I can only speak for myself and my own music, because that is what I am most familiar with, and I write about things that I am living or experiencing.

I've always written about things that cause me to feel something.

When you research prolific songwriters, it is usually later in their career they write songs that they distance themselves from, or it's about other people.

I write my songs because I've lived them.

Don't imitate. Write what you know about, that has to be your goal.

I'm the guy who wrote The Authority Song. Did they think I was kidding? Did they think it was only a song to entertain?

My real life helped me sell a lot of records.

I didn't want to be on a major label. I wanted all the attention and the noise to go away because I wanted to be something a little bit more substantial.

I really wanted it to be organic and coming from my heart. So, I think maybe the initial thought of wanting to go in that direction, I had to wait until things happened in our world and in our country that fired me up enough where the words came out organically.

My inspiration is always what I think my fans want to listen to. I often write about social problems. If I'm not going through it or I haven't gone through it, I want to make sure it touches someone. That's what I base my music on.

I always like to write where I'm at in real life into whatever I'm working on.

Most of all I want to make pop music that has something real behind it.

Every writer is going to end up drawing from their own experiences in one way or another.

I do feel pressure from the outside world a little bit just because everybody wants new music, which is really nice. It just proves that everybody likes what I'm doing. But at the same time, I feel like it's important to just chill and experience things and really make the songs true to me.

I would love to be one of the few artists that hits a point of success and can go back into the studio and make another album that matters and relates to people and not go back in and be super tainted by this whole thing.

I love hip hop, and I have a bunch of urban songs I write for fun that I can't put on my albums because people would laugh and point.