I've loved singing since forever. Whether it was with my sisters while cleaning the kitchen, putting shows on for my stuffed animals, writing songs about my stuffed animals, starting an a capella group with my cousins while on vacation, or awkwardly singing along to karaoke tracks alone in my bedroom - singing always found a way into my life.
In college, I faced an interesting problem. I wanted to play music all the time and yet I wasn't ready for anyone to hear it. To remedy this, I took to retreating to stairwells as a safe place to sing and write music. It was there that I wrote most of my songs in college and really grew into an artist.
If I try to write a song, I will completely fail to write a song. But if I'm just holding my guitar and I just start humming, then I'll have a song in an hour.
I started writing songs when I was 10. It was a natural way to express myself as a kid. It wasn't until I started listening to jazz, joined the choir and picked up a guitar that my little hobby became something far more serious.
I think the more that I can find myself getting out of the way - like you said yourself - trying to get out of thinking too much, and sometimes something truly special can happen. That's the beautiful mystery of song writing - that you really don't know where these songs come from exactly, and you don't know how you came up with them - and god bless it that you should have the gift of channeling that.
I'd got married and wanted to have kids, so had kids, brought them up, did other things, and slowly got back into music. And it feels great, having one foot in the present, writing and covering interesting songs, and having one foot in the past.
My whole career was launched in such sort of poptastic style with 'Kids In America', and I liked - and like - being poptastic. Songs big on melody, high on energy, lots of attitude... what's wrong with that?
I really like the song "Only One" [ Kanye West with Paul McCartney].
In my opinion, poets talk through the symptoms of disease. These symptoms of disease are predictions, screams, and songs.
And then, I was thinking of doing a record just like starting with voice, because I did this one song that was just kind of a cappella, and I did it for this art piece I did where people could come and play music to go with a voice.
I never had any other thought in my mind. I was gonna write songs, I was gonna be a star and a singer and I never thought of doing anything else.
I get total creative control when I'm in the studio now to do what I want to do. If I feel like doing a song I'll do a song. The buzz has been great, in fact a lot of people hit me up now, they're seein me on hiphopgame.com with the journal and I'm just telling people my ideas. All I want to do is make good music at the end of the day.
Late night chaining of videos and basically obsessing are rare for me, and often I've never even seen the videos of my favourite songs. That said, in terms of my own personal magic, video has probably rated lower than most music fans.
I've never done songs with people just for the sake of the great combination. I've always done songs with friends.
The program director at a radio station, by the way, is not the superstar. If he was a superstar, he'd be out creating songs, but he's not. But he wants to act like he has control and power.
If people had good albums, they'd be buying albums. But people are buying singles because they only have good songs.
And now that Martina McBride knows of T.I., and T.I. knows of Martina McBride, that made me very happy, too. It's introducing worlds to different people and bringing them together with a song.
I don't write songs thinking about formats, where is it going to get played, who am I gonna please, what's the outlet for it.
I don't tell 'U.S. Weekly' which parties I'm going to. I write songs.
The mute grain turns to love songs when swallowed by the nightingale.
But now I have learned to listen to silence. To hear its choirs singing the song of ages, chanting the hymns of space, and disclosing the secrets of eternity.
My Soul gave me good counsel, teaching me that the lamp which I carry does not belong to me, and the song that I sing was not generated from within me.
Master, Master Poet, Master of our silent desires, The heart of the world quivers with the throbbing of your heart, But it burns not with your song.
Does the song of the sea end at the shore or in the hearts of those who listen to it?
I write all the time, and I write a lot of songs, but before I started putting out records those songs always just ended up on stuff that I did with The Babies.
