The thing about hip-hop producers, and the thing about hip-hop musicians, is that we listen to everything. And we're inspired by everything. I'd say even more so than any other genre of music.
When I started making my tracks in the style that people call tropical house, I didn't do it on purpose to make it sound tropical. I made whatever I felt sounded good. I just wanted to make my own thing, and then suddenly people started calling it tropical ... I'm like, 'Yeah, that's probably a good name for it.'
In 2010, aside from that niche of music that I have no interest in - Black Eyed Peas territory, disposable pop stuff - there's almost an incentive to go back to making music as adventurous and groundbreaking as you can, because nobody gets a big hit anymore.
I've experimented with so many different sounds, it's difficult to say what the Donovan sound really is, but it's essentially my voice and guitars.
I had no idea 'The Dream Weaver' would be so successful. Everything just fell into place with that album. I pioneered a number of ideas with that album and subsequent tour. The all-keyboard approach with no guitars was a new one, and I was one of the first to use a drum machine in concert. It was an amazing time.
Yes, I want to work with Rick Rubin. Yes, I want to work with Trent Reznor. Yes, I want to work with Madlib. Yes, I want to get with all these wonderful people. Collie Buddz, Marsha Ambrosius. I just want to go, man. I'm gonna keep on making music.
I was a pioneer in MTV and I was there from the very beginning. So I saw how that developed and how loose it was and how much fun it was in its looseness. And I was influenced a lot by that.
I'm always on tour, so I'm always trying new tracks out live before they're released. That's more necessity than anything, because I don't get a proper chance to sit in a studio and work on tracks like other producers do.
I feel like the U.K. is a better breeding ground for pop, partially because the radio play is more broad and open to new ideas and sounds.
I don't think I was ever meant to be tied down to one band for the rest of my life, playing one style of music.
'Tim Timtya' was different from what I usually do. I had to develop a texture to go with the song. In fact, many told me I sounded like Shreya Goshal, which came as a pleasant surprise. Transitioning from tracks like 'Sunny Sunny' to this one was quite different.
I listen to a lot of stuff. I mean, I'm constantly switching up what I'm listening to.
I like to experiment when it comes to music.
I'd often use a Leslie cabinet on its own in the studio because everyone in the late Sixties and Seventies was experimenting with them. We'd stick anything through a Leslie because it made everything sound so good.
For instance, I'm always fascinated to see whether, given the kind of fairly known and established form called popular music, whether there is some magic combination that nobody has hit upon before.
I have musical ADD, so I like to switch things up.
It's just so obscure to take a folk song in a different language and be a pretty well-respected English-speaking rock band and totally take a song and twist it around and have fun with it.
I think what the story of Yes has been is we've wandered in and out of different styles over the years.
I have always tried with my shows - win, lose, or draw - to take the boundaries of music as far as I can.
I don't really play a lot of slide in general, but it was fun getting into that style and exploring it.
She was a performance artist calling herself Lady Gaga, who had a European dance-club sound and pop-star aspirations - elements that historically haven't mixed.
Twenty percent of my records, you'll find a loop, like two or three loops per album out of 13 or 15 songs. I'd rather keep it like that.
I treat every album as a new beginning, so I'm asking myself, 'What is pop music now? What are people consuming?' and I take these things into effect.
People looked at me - people still look at me - as 'this is Gucci Mane's producer.' But the music that me and Future put together was so different than what me and Gucci do, it just made people look at the music like, 'Hold on - Zaytoven is the real deal.'
When I was about 15 I had already been recording on my four track in my room, but I couldn't find anyone in my town to be in a band with me. I was in a band very briefly with a bunch of guys and they kicked me out because they wanted to play grindcore. I think they didn't think I could tread hard enough or something. So I started playing solo.
