My shows will always be inspired by hip hop culture and my upbringing within it.
If you are successful because of Hip Hop, which I am, then you have to recognize that Hip Hop is nothing if not a product of the street, therefore you have to give something back.
I wanted to do is kind of invoke that and then dive into that kind of repetition as a DJ thing because DJing you hear beats, like "boom, boom, boom, bap, bap." You know hip hop, house, techno. So how do you translate between those electronic motifs and the motifs of the landscape itself? That is what I wanted to go for.
I listen to so much, I listen to a lot of reggae. Obviously I listen to hip-hop, that's what I make. I listen to soul. I love jazz. I love all types of music.
Leaning to the side but you can't speed through; 2 miles an hour so everybody sees you.
I once lost a bill betting on the Red Sox, ...But that's another topic.
Hip-hop was my first audience - I would rap in the mirror, walk down the street and listen to my Walkman.
I have pretty ecumenical tastes. I'm interested in a lot of different kinds of music, so I don't listen with a jaundiced ear to music because it's in a certain category, whether it's country or opera or hip-hop or bebop or whatever it is.
I think hip-hop is actually one of the most challenging things that's happened in music in a long time.
I said 'Whoa, little hottie, I'm not DeLorean, Gambino or Gotti. I don't deal coke, And furthermore you're making me broke. I'll put you in a rehab and I won't tell your folks.' And what do you know, In 18 months she came home, And I let her back in... And now she's sniffing again.
I've always wanted to introduce hip-hop filmmaking to film. There's hip-hop art, dance, music, but there really isn't hip-hop film. So I was trying to do that.
I'm a child of the 70's. R&B to me is Curtis Mayfield. Then a transition came in and I was part of the Hip Hop era when Sugar and Kane came out. That was a good transition for me. Then now R&B is Hip Hop and Hip Hop is R&B.
When I fell in love with hip-hop, my favorite rapper was Jay-Z. But I used to like Common and Nas. But I was a South dude. So I grew up on UGK, Triple Six, Outkast, and Pastor Troy. That's where I get my lingo, my slang, my passion.
I was competitive in the ring and hip-hop is competitive too... I think rappers condition themselves like boxers, so they all kind of feel like they're the champ.
The competitive nature of hip-hop culture has always had battling involved with it. So you battle with the other artist but not necessarily in business and everywhere else.
Because hip-hop has no requirements, you deal with people that have the least intelligence on the planet. Some of the people that compare themselves to me, compare themselves to me because they rap and I rap. They can't even read the contracts that they sign to be a rapper, to do the deal.
Rap is just a movement within the larger culture of hip-hop.
I love things that are very broad. I love alternative, rock, hip hop, rap, and I'll go to classical or jazz.
That old ball and chain had me chained up for weeks, So of course I'm off the chain as soon as I hit the streets.
I'm not really up on what's new. I'm still listening to Run DMC twenty-five years later. In the same way that the baby-boomers in America were forcing '60s music and Motown down our throats, now people of my generation are forcing Tears For Fears and old Hip Hop upon others.
Radio is less important than it used to be. Kids are not just hip-hop kids, just punk kids, just pop kids, just whatever kids. Everyone is mixing and matching on their playlists.
In this lifetime, you got two things: Bad and good, and ain't nothin' in between.
It's not about what you get out but what you put into hip hop as a genre.
The biggest thing that has happened to hip-hop is the clinging on to the corporation as the all-mighty hub of the music.
I'm envious of the way that electronic dance music has organised itself. It has been able to understand what it ain't rather than what it is. And I think that slipped away from hip-hop as soon as the DJs lost the majority of the say so in the direction of the music.
