My favorite color is jungle green. At least, that's what it said on the side of my favorite crayon in first grade. I don't know if it's an official color.
Mike Posner
I wanted to be the most famous. And it wasn't until I hung out with Justin Bieber that the whole thing got demystified. The mystique of it was gone.
I think it should be socially acceptable for men to like 'You're Beautiful' by James Blunt.
It's always hard for an artist from the U.K. to break into the United States. It's especially harder for a rapper because hip-hop is such an American art form.
What I'm trying to do is maintain some mindfulness about being popular - I wasn't so great at that last time around.
I wanted to break into producing, so I would peddle my tracks and beats to labels. I always heard the same thing: They liked the music, but it didn't fit any of the artists on their roster.
If they want to party and do all the things I say brought me sadness in my song, with my song as the soundtrack... so be it.
I'm kind of like a rapper trapped in a singer's body.
In my short career, I tend not to repeat myself. I have no interest in redoing something. Sometimes that makes people angry, and maybe it's not the best thing for me commercially. But it's the best thing for me artistically, and it's the best thing for my heart.
It's like, we all grow up thinking it would be so nice to have hundreds of people falling over themselves trying to grab us, telling us we're great, that they love us.
I've remixed lots of other people's songs, from Adele to Electric Light Orchestra to Beyonce, so when my record label said, 'Why don't you give 'Ibiza' to someone to remix?' I said, 'Sure,' because I like the idea of people reimagining art and making something new out of it.
It's easier to make art for a society at a certain point in time with an understanding of what's going on.
I co-produced 'Boyfriend' by Justin Bieber and worked on Labrinth's album, so I've been keeping busy.
I looked at myself and realized I had a lot of boundaries up about what I would talk about, what was private for me and what wasn't. I decided to just get rid of them. It was quite liberating.
If anyone has listened to my stuff over the years, they know I tend not to do the same thing twice.
I believe in the ethos of the remix, like Andy Warhol making a painting of a Campbell's soup label.
When I started picking out music for myself, I was a hip-hop kid. DMX, The Roots, Outkast, people like that.
If a song about blowing your shot becomes popular, that's really funny.
When I recorded 'Cooler Than Me', I had been singing for like, three months at the most. I was just a producer experimenting with my voice on tracks, and now I'm, like, a really good singer in a legit way.
I realized that a lot of people in my family had sacrificed for me to have the opportunity to go to a place like Duke. I owed it to them to finish. I graduated with a 3.6.
I know it sounds corny, but I look for a girl that has a beautiful personality on the inside.
My songs are all personal.
Just be yourself and be upfront about your expectations and desires. Don't be ambiguous and play hard to get. It doesn't work. You'll end up in the friend zone.
I realized I could do music for the sake of music, not the other things that come with it. That was a major shift.
When you know it's a game, you can have more fun playing it. When things seem serious, you tend to take less risk and have less fun.
I remember being 24 in Los Angeles. And up until that moment, when my mom would call my cell phone and it would ring, I would be flushed with some sort of excitement that we all have - a little dopamine rush, when my phone rings - and I'd look down, and it would say, 'Mom.' It used to feel like a job to pick that up.
When I was a kid, my parents were always like, 'Money doesn't buy happiness.' I thought, 'You just didn't make enough money.' I had to go find it out for myself.
I made a CD in my dorm room and put it on the Internet, and my friends blew it up. Within a few months, I was doing shows across the country without a record deal, without a single, without anything.
If my career was a basketball season, I'm in the pre-season still. I'm not blowing everybody out by 40 - there's so much work to be done, and there's no time to really sit and look back and be proud of what I've done yet, because it's the pre-season still.
I didn't give myself enough love, so I was searching for it in other places, and it was a never ending struggle.
I really look up to Louis C.K. I think he's great. And obviously he's very popular, more popular than me. Years ago, I was thinking, naively, it would be great to be that popular. And then I thought about it and then I realized that, with his money and his level of notoriety, he has all of the same emotions that I do.
I enjoyed a cartoon show called 'Recess' throughout my high school career. The target audience for that show was 8-11 years old.
I thought, 'Oh that's what happens. You put a song out and everyone likes it.' Well, then a funny thing happened: I started putting more songs out, and none of them did the same thing.
My favorite Duke player ever is Steve Wojciechowski. He called me one day congratulating me on my success thus far, and I was like,'I appreciate it, but man, please don't congratulate me. I know when you guys start the season, you're not just trying to be 10-10 or ACC champions, you're trying to win it all.'
That's why I make mixtapes. That's why I work with Don Cannon; that's why i work with Big Sean. Even though I don't rap, I got love and acceptance in that community, and that's something that I really take seriously and hold close to my heart.
My focus is to try to appreciate the present moment more and more and more.
It took me a long time to stumble upon a sound, and I figured out I wanted to kinda sing rapper's lyrics.
I've only had success when I'm not trying to. It's that weird thing where if you're trying to impress a girl, you're not going to impress her. But if you aren't trying to impress a girl, you'll probably impress her because you're not trying.
I've always had an eclectic taste in music. But what I try to do is combine these things in ways that others would never think of, like putting Bun B on an Elton John song.
I try to tell the truth in my lyrics; write good melodies and make hard beats. So, basically, I just combine hip-hop with melody. That's how I classify myself.
All my music is autobiographical, and that's the reason why people like my music. They know when I'm saying something on a song, I mean it. It comes from a real place and captures the realness in my life.
I'm scared to give gratitude to the people that, if I hadn't heard their stuff, I wouldn't be able to make music.
I grew up a hip-hop kid doing mix-tapes.
I hated the thought of being just a songwriter.
I was a paperboy first, then I worked at a movie theater. But I was a caddie at a golf club, which I didn't like. The people were so bougie and racist at times.
A lot of my friends who I wrote or produced songs for came back and helped me make 'Pages.' It's better than I ever could have imagined.
I remember I wanted to be an athlete. I wanted to be in the NFL or NBA or something, and I don't think I dreamed of being a benchwarmer. I'm sure I wanted to be the best. But I didn't really ever think I was going to be a famous musician.
How can a song all about struggling with the afterglow of fame thrust someone into fame? How can a lyric like, 'I'm just a singer who already blew his shot,' give a singer another shot? I don't know... but it's funny.
My earliest musical memory is of my older sister playing me Nirvana's 'Nevermind' on headphones in the back of the car on a road trip.
People like me for my songwriting and production, not my singing.
