I'm kind of like a folk singer mixed with soul, but I feel like if you really are a lover of hip-hop music, make the beat banging as possible and then put the message in so that people get the honey with the medicine.
I like rap. I like anything with soul. I like anything you can feel, anything that makes you think that the artist had to make that song, or they were going to go crazy.
I'm in R&B/Soul, and I feel like all my music is R&B driven. Even some of the songs that are more rap have an R&B feel, so I'm with that.
Musicians like James Blake were a big influence on me. How he uses his vocals is amazing. And then Yeasayer and Animal Collective, who aren't pop bands exactly, but they do something that is so catchy and undeniable and so much fun.
I'm gonna be honest: I was never really a fan of techno music, dance music.
What do I call my music? Beats with melodies.
The melodies are always the most important part to me. I am pulled more to the groove than the chord progression. After you find the groove, you find the most simple chord progressions and then sit inside that groove.
If you listen to a Deadmau5 record or a Skrillex record, I really enjoy that stuff because, as aggressive sounding as the Skrillex records are, they're still musical, and that's why they have such a broad appeal.
I got started as a producer first, but really, I feel my beats had more life than anyone could rap on them.
In hip-hop, sometimes that pace is so fast that you miss things. I don't mean literally miss lyrics; I just think there's an emotion in what these cats are saying that gets by you. When you slow things down, there's this emotion, this yearning.
Radio is being dominated by records that are 120 beats per minute. R&B is about groove and soul.
My brother had written 'Ocean Eyes,' and we recorded it, basing all of the production around contemporary and lyrical dance. I think of most songs that way - if you can't dance to a song, it's not a song.
Honestly, so much of that EDM stuff is just so disposable.
I'm not so rock and roll. I'm more techno.
R&B and all that stuff was always very spare and spontaneous. Nobody made those records under solid gold situations. It was just in and out, and you didn't labor over the thing. I like music like that.
It's probably the first type of music we had, rhythm, whether it's poetry or tapping.
A lot of rap songs don't usually have a lot of melody per se.
I grew up singing ballads, but what I really wanted to get into was the mainstream music on the radio because I really love the beats and everything.
'Live a Lie' is inspired by recent combinations found in dubstep.
I love a great melody and wonderful lyrics that speak from the heart, and my music has that and speaks about it; but there's just something that was really raw and energetic about the early House music. It's hard to describe. It's like you had to go to these parties where the stuff was being played on these huge sound systems to really feel it.
