If you're writing a detective novel or horror or sci-fi, you want to expand or reinvigorate the genre in your own little way.
I've heard some people say that I'm selling out, but I'm not. If I hadn't done 'Black Radio', and just kept on doing just piano trio stuff, I wouldn't be honest with myself; I'd be doing it to please other people. That would be selling out.
As a musician, I look for certain things that stimulate me. And what I look for is something that's an evolution on a particular genre that I never heard before.
R&B needs to see a new light. It doesn't have to be pigeonholed.
I've been singing one kind of genre for a long time but have always tried to push to new auras about picking new songs or the same kind of genre but trying to sing it differently, treating it differently.
It was about working with other musicians, but more than that it's about exploring musical areas that you could never do with the band you're in, in my case Judas Priest. You could tackle musical areas and lyrical areas that wouldn't be appropriate for Priest.
I grew up listening pretty much just to pop music. But the older I've gotten, the more varied my musical tastes have become.
To all the musicians who are making reggaeton, let's put some more effort into it and bring something new to the people!
All genres of music have to evolve, grow, and expand in order to maintain. I don't think there's anything wrong with the growth of R&B. I welcome it.
The genres are widening. I don't think that there's as many limitations on the kinds of projects that actors can do as there once was.
I think older people can appreciate my music because I really show my heart when I sing, and it's not corny. I think I can grow as an artist, and my fans will grow with me.
The older I get, the more interest I have in writing other kinds of music.
Play a jungle record from 1993 to someone in 1989 and it would have sounded like something so new that it would have challenged them to rethink what music was, or could be.
As we grow, our music grows, and it's very natural and organic, and it's nothing that's forced, which is really, really important to us because we don't want to just do something drastic just to do it.
Fantasy is, of course, booming, and I think it's beginning to stretch its range as well.
People don't want rap to be anything other than it is. But genres expand. My contributions, no matter how they sound, will always be rap, because they'll always be black.
I definitely see the genre opening up a lot more. I don't know if black people don't want to get into country music or what, but I feel like we're breaking down barriers.
The first three issues of 'Cemetery Dance' were mainly horror, but now it's really a cross-genre magazine. It's all just snowballed.
Here's the thing, for me at least: this is a huge genre now. It wasn't always so. Not so many years ago, it wasn't so. There is a tremendous diversity in fantasy today.
'Ordinary Grace' freed me. I don't have to write only Cork O'Connor novels now. I'm liberated. I can write whatever I want to write.
If you look at the difference between the first Clash record and 'Combat Rock,' what an evolution.
In my 30s, I became more open to music other than country or bluegrass.
I used to regard genres as being embedded in cliches, and I always felt funny about the need we have to label things. But I'm happy to think of 'Starred Up' as a prison drama, although we tried to smuggle in some elements of family drama in there.
Literary fiction, as a strict genre, is all but dead. Meanwhile, most genres flourish.
When Kenny first came to me, I think he was thinking of making a nice little folk record, but in my opinion, folk music had come to an end and I felt he needed to go to the next step, the next generation.
