Mainstream Influence Quotes

To a degree, rock fans like to live vicariously and they like that, music fans in general, but when indie music sort of came into prominence in the early '90s, a lot of it was TV-driven, too, where if you saw the first Nirvana video, you're looking at three guys that look like people you go to school with.

I'm interested in bridging and filling in space that hasn't already been filled, so when it comes to making music, I've just always wanted to be able to reference things that producers in the big pop major label context do, without compromising the entire sound of the record.

You can't rule America from the fringes. You must rule America from the middle.

I don't live in the Hollywood bubble. I never have and I never will.

I do fear for the generations of people who came of age thinking that pop-punk is what punk is, and that all the rebellion you need is just to stick your tongue out in the mirror every once in a while.

We've had real strong aboriginal male artists who've crossed over to the mainstream who have toured the U.K., who have been a massive influence on myself and many, many communities around Australia.

Everything's so commercialised it shuts down the underground.

What I want to do right now is give hip hop back to the hood. Before it was a neighborhood thing where it belonged to the hood and the rappers were reporting and there were rules and parameters. Now it seems like the artist's game.

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.

You won't really get a lot of the mainstream, lovey-dovey side because that wasn't a part of my life in the beginning.

There was a long time in my life where I made music that I thought my friends would like, or that I thought would get me a record deal, or what I thought I was supposed to make because that's what I was seeing in mainstream. I didn't know myself; I didn't find myself musically or, in real life.

Hopefully we get back to the raw essence of hip hop again.