I go out partying to figure out exactly who I'm making music for. You can't just guess.
Code writers, they are my idols.
There's an entry point to any relationship.
I can't sing “I Believe I Can Fly”. I sing that horrible. But I can sing “I Gotta Feeling” good. I wrote it for my capabilities. So I Gotta Feeling is just about let me make a song to inspire people to have a good time.
If I were a painter, I would paint beautiful bodies - I would paint nipples, and I would paint Bibles. Am I going to say, 'I'm not going to paint this woman's neck because people will think I just want to lick on necks?' Please! That's not what art is about.
Every young person is going to be inspired to be a maker from now on. It's like how everyone used to want to be a musician, an actor, an athlete -- but a maker is what people are going to want to be.
Pop is the most competitive form of music there is. You are always fighting to be adopted and accepted by the masses, and it's always shifting.
I was born and raised in the ghetto, on welfare, two minutes from homeless.
There are five issues that make a fist of a hand that can knock America out cold. They're lack of jobs, obesity, diabetes, homelessness, and lack of good education.
When someone is denying what they are, then that's when things start to spiral down.
The way young people are joining communities online, and agreeing and separating themselves and creating their own facts about things like vaccination, is worrying.
There's no chivalry in culture any more. Sometimes you meet someone who everyone says is polite and you're like, 'Wow,' but then it's like, 'Hang on, isn't everyone supposed to be polite?'
Most of these people who are celebrities now don't do anything to deserve it, so by that fact alone, I don't want to be one.
You're always moving and thinking about a whole bunch of things. But those traits work well for me in studios and in meetings about creative ideas. If you listen to the songs I write, they are the most ADHD songs ever. They have five hooks in one and it all happens in three minutes. I figured out a way of working with it.
The computer allows me to execute my ideas at the speed I think them.
Not many people give you a vision of what the future will bring.
If you are a chef, no matter how good a chef you are, it's not good cooking for yourself; the joy is in cooking for others - it's the same with music.
Here's the problem: Profiteers haunt America, and for everything we try to control, someone's going to profit from it, more than you control it.
We have no control over the outcome of anything. Like the planet and global warming, we don't control that. If politicians want a war we don't control that. Acts of terrorism, we can't control them.
Tom Jones is like igloo-cool.
I have a pro tools rig that I carry in my backpack.
I love the Asian countries.
Now that Obama's president, it changes inner-city youths. They can now not just dream to be Lil Waynes and 50 Cents, but they can now dream to be Obamas.
Traveling in Europe made me understand that America has an island mentality: No one exists except us. There's a whole other world out there, but most Americans - all they know is America, the marketing plan.
There's only one type of music and that's good music, no matter what genre it is.
