It's easy to get people to sing along to cover songs, but when it's your song, it's the coolest.
My place in London is very small, so a piano would take up a third of the room. I leave home in the morning when I'm there and go to my studio. I close the door, and it's soundproof. There's no phone or TV or computer, and I can work uninterruptedly. That has been a huge advantage over the years.
All my writing takes place during the recording of the master tapes. I never do have songs when I start up an album. I actually write them while I record.
When I begin working on a production, I don't really think about my previous album or albums. I try to have a real creative process.
I have never used Auto-Tune in a live television performance, and I have never used Auto-Tune in any of my concerts. That is a promise.
I think recording at home feels more organic, and injects some more personality into the music.
I was in a choir as a kid. It was from those early days that my outlook on harmonies and arrangements were nurtured. I always took that with me, even on the earliest Bad Religion record, which strangely was only about six years after that.
I do so much music that it's like a fog, and I can't even remember all of it.
When I'm in the studio with a writer, I don't mind for them to take the lead and show me something new.
A lot of people record on a laptop and use plug-ins, which might be OK for the kind of music that they're doing. But for the kind of music that I'm doing, that just doesn't work. I can't cut corners; everything has to be organic.
It's the actual recording of the vocal that is the most boring thing you'll ever do in your life.
The main thing is we never dissolved our Gang Starr contract. We are still signed to each other. We never disbanded the group. If Guru really wanted to super-dead it he would have said, 'Yo, I want out.' And I still would have tried to convince him to stay. We are still Gang Starr.
If you listen to the radio for a whole hour there's maybe one decent song. The rest is mass-produced garbage
I feel very lucky to get to fly the flag of RCA Records and Sony Music.
Since his childhood, Bappa has observed me singing and practicing and is well aware of all sorts of recording and singing arrangements. I have a studio at my home, so whenever he needs my help I make sure I stand by him. I often sing for the tunes that he composes.
In the end, I get a really good song, and in the end, I get the hits. Yeah, I'm that good.
There's this weird game called 'Blueberry Garden.' For that game an artist recorded some piano music, but evidently he only had a really terrible microphone on top of the piano, and I really liked it and wanted to experiment with that. So, I made piano recording and really mangled it, and kept experimenting with the technique.
New songs are why artists go on the road. That's why I go on the road. It's a three-prong play. Writing: You're intrigued. Recording: It brings it to life. And then you want to share it.
I think an album is all about the songs you've worked on and the journey it's taken to get there.
I have no such ambition of becoming an actor. I want to grow as a musician, singer and songwriter.
The 808 kick drum makes the girlies get dumb, We're rollin' Rainier, and the jealous wanna get some. Every time we do the sucka MC's wanna battle, I'm the man they love to hate, the J.R. Ewing of Seattle.
Nirvana, Weezer and Smashing Pumpkins, all those bands, at their core, are just really incredible pop music and I think a lot of that stuff has deeply affected the way I approach music.
B.G. was just like his lyrics.
They say the music you listen to in your formative years stays with you and leaves an impression for the rest of your life. For me, the things that I fell in love with happened in the '70s, when artists were nurtured by record companies and it wasn't about singles.
I love Usher's 'Confessions.'
