Rap music deserves truth, and it deserves spontaneity.
El-P
I just like heavy music in general - from heavy rock and heavy metal and heavy rap and heavy everything. I've always been attracted to it.
We all want recognition and validation to an extent for our art, but greatness as a trade for decency is a risky proposition. In my life, I try to leave the people I encounter with the feeling that they have been respected and treated with warmth and appreciation.
I work on a musician's week, so Monday is Friday. By the time Thursday rolls around, you stay in, and you work, and you don't go out because it's horrible.
My love of Seagal is ridiculous. Like, I love this man. I love how ridiculous he is. I mean, he made an album called 'Songs From The Crystal Cave.'
I had a boom box with a dual cassette deck and a mic, so I used to make pause tapes. I think a lot of people started like that because it was all I had. I would just take rap records that I liked and just loop the beat by pressing pause and record and make, like, five minutes of these beats.
I've never had a huge collection of records; I've never been a beat digga. I never been one of these guys who drives cross-country and knows some one-legged sailor who has a boat parked off some pier with a thousand Russian funk records that he stole from the Red Army in 1972.
I don't ever really feel guilty about music, quite frankly. When you're younger, you think that anything you don't like, you have to hate. I'm so far beyond that perspective. Although, I will say I resent Bruno Mars for making me like him as much as I do. I wish that he wasn't so likeable.
Just because I run an indie label doesn't mean I don't think Jay-Z is nice.
If there's any credence to the guy who wrote 'Drones Over Blkyn' a year before drones were flying over Brooklyn, then listen to me: we're going to be in fascist police state.
I remember listening to 'Low End Theory': I had been kicked out of high school. I was in GED school in the LES, and all I could do was listen to 'Low End Theory.' I was in a strange time in my life, and 'Low End Theory' kind of defined that time.
Being stupid and compassionate are not conflicts. Being mean and being funny and having something to say are not a conflict.
I think it's impossible for hip-hop to be a dying art form.
The last Company Flow reunion show in New York City was pretty insane. Everybody knew all the words to every song; everybody had smiles on their faces. Those shows are what you hope for every time you get on the stage.
The thing about Steven Seagal is that he clearly wants to be a great person, but he just doesn't know how.
How could you possibly call something science fiction at this point unless it has to do with something that hasn't been done? When I write about 'Drones over Brooklyn,' it's not like I'm making something up. Drones are policing American cities.
I really only put stuff out when I have something to say and I feel like I've got a direction and I've got an idea - and that can even take two, two-and-a-half years to flesh out.
Personally more so than shock, I think, rap music has to be born of rebellion.
If you live in a crowded area of Brooklyn or Manhattan, having a car is a hindrance. It doesn't even make sense. I basically grew up all my life without a car.
Music can feel empowering, or it can give a natural emotional voice to something people can't express. This is why it's beautiful.
I really want to produce a record for Mary J. Blige.
Darkness does not truly have sway. I think that it's weak.
When writing songs, especially if they're kinda semi-true to you, a lot of people hide behind whatever their idea of themselves is in the record, and every now and then, you might make a song that exposes something a little too much about you, and there's a part that doesn't want yourself to be exposed.
You don't know what it feels like to have someone go to bat for you until you really need it, and they do.
I was obsessed with Philip K. Dick.
I'm not that prolific in terms of making my own music.
I had a year, where... I was secretly, 100 percent, dead broke.
'Meow The Jewels' was a nightmare of a promise I had to fulfill. We made a joke that if the fans gave us $40,000, we would remix our album using nothing but cat sounds.
I think that Gordon Ramsay is maybe one of the most entertaining people ever on television. And I would love to pretend to be Gordon Ramsay and walk into a restaurant uninvited and attempt to make them change their menu. It's just a personal fantasy of mine.
You don't have to say something directly to affect someone. You can make a piece of music without words that can capture a feeling of tragedy or struggle or anger or triumph. It's the translation of the human experience into another form.
Some of the music I made for 'Fantastic Damage' I thought I was making for the Company Flow album, but the majority of it was post-Company Flow.
If New York has just become a mall for the world, then what's the difference between being here and somewhere else?
With me, I'm going to have a label where no one is ever cheated, ever.
I'm not a 'dystopian, futuristic master': I'm a schnook walking the street. It's an insane reality we're living in, and I'm just trying to translate it for myself.
Run The Jewels, me and Mike, and our connection and everything, came out of a period of time where I had personally lost everything.
I strongly believe in the art form of the album.
Def Jam is the reason why I started a label.
I think that people have been claiming hip-hop as being dead since the moment it started.
New York is just an energy. There's a beauty to the way it's laid out: the architecture, the way the planning is. It's huge, but you really do get to experience more than your own existence here. It's kinda hard to isolate yourself from different types of people, different types of ideas or communities.
I don't necessarily think the way people do, but that's not my problem. My problem is not to reinforce or destroy any ideas anyone might have about me, how I do what I do, what my intentions are, the way that I do it. My only job, as far as I can see, is to do the music that I want to do.
I probably started trying to make beats at around 12.
My videogame mind died after they stopped making wonderful escape worlds - every game just turned into me training to be in the army. But I used to love the Oddworld and 'Abe's Exoddus' and 'Abe's Oddysee' for Playstation.
I definitely grew up on Garfield. I just loved his pessimism.
I've lived in New York City all my life. I love New York City; I've never moved from New York City. Have I ever thought about moving out of New York? Yeah, sure. I need about $10 million to do it right, though.
Standing up for what you believe is right, as well as standing up for what you believe is funny, standing up for what you believe is cool. As we found each other and the music that we do, we get to live out all of those things. That's what Run The Jewels is: it's all of those aspects of our personality.
The thing I love about music is, if you do it long enough, you get better and better at translating what's in your head to a medium. That's why I keep doing it.
I'm really pretty ridiculous about how much I work on my music, and I don't look at it as necessarily a good quality. I look at it as a side effect of my apparent insanity. It is what it is, man.
There's always stuff to rebel against.
I literally have a massive database of cat sounds.
I've been listening to this group called the Veils, which I kind of discovered late. I've been really obsessed with this album that they have called 'Nux Vomica,' and I just think it's a brilliantly produced and written rock record.
