Regardless of what amount of satire or sarcasm is heard in what I do, the reason it connects with people is because the fun and the wildness in it is sincere.
Ricky Reed
My career has been one long love letter to California as a whole, top to bottom.
Every collaboration with a new person is like when you take a bin of Legos and dump them on the floor. All of the pieces to work with are right there. A floor full of Legos is full of possibilities.
My music has evolved to reflect that multigendered, multiracial, multigenre music. Whether I realized it before or not, I'm most influenced by that rock and soul hybrid.
If you are stuck at a dead-end job, or you know your friends are bringing you down, the time to act is now. You don't know how much time you've got left.
I started off making music that made fun of pop; now I'm nominated for helping produce pop songs that aim to be as honest as possible.
A lot of what we do in the studio on a day-to-day basis is you try to cast a line as far out as you can out into unknown waters and reel it back in, cut out stuff that isn't working, cut out stuff that isn't connecting to people.
A lot of people from the Bay, especially musicians, feel like northern California is not the place where everything's poppin' off and not quite on the cutting edge artistically as New York or L.A. People from the Bay feel like they have something to prove, and I always love feeling like I have something to prove.
I have a short attention span. And when I'm in the middle of one thing, I'm then drawn to the next thing.
I believe that I am one of the greats of this generation.
I've always thought I haven't ever had much of a lucky break.
A lot of people say don't let bad vibes into the studio, but I love to. If you're having a bad day, write a song that feels like that.
I'm trying to make pop records for the middle-class, lower-middle-class - pop for the 99 percent.
Don't do anyone else's version of a hit song - it's gonna sound terrible. You just have to do what you do well and crank it up to 11.
I think, because I didn't think of myself getting into writing and production since I was younger, I could get bored of it if I don't continue to pivot.
I can never think about, 'Is this going to sell? Is this going to work on radio?' I just have to get in the zone where I'm like, 'Do I love this, or do I not love this?' Essentially it all comes down to that.
Pitbull is, like, one of the most incredible humans. He's an amazing guy, and when we first connected on 'Fireball,' he said, 'I love it!' He recorded the verse in a day, we mixed it the next day, and it was on the radio in like two weeks after we made the initial track. That's just how he works. He's so hard working, kind, and really appreciative.
I grew up playing in rock bands while I was listening to rap records. I like a lot of stuff.
Collaborating with someone on music is the same way you'd go about hanging out. You have to listen more than you talk.
This might sound strange, but I've never really been a person who has goals of any sort. I tend to just work in the moment, day-to-day, try to make things and make decisions that feel good, and it tends to guide me where I want to go in the long-term.
Los Angeles is a huge, great diverse place, but I had to find the version that worked for me. I am lucky I did because I probably wouldn't be where I am had I not.
I studied the Ghanaian drums and bongo drumming.
I really enjoy the creative freedom that I get when I produce my own projects.
When I started trying to produce records for other people, one of the first tracks I wrote and produced was sort of a 'Kelly Clarkson circa 2008,' kind of big-brassy, guitar-pop, rock song. I was like, 'I can do this. I can make pop songs.' It was bad.
What I ended up learning was that I had to do what I do well, and do it really well and say, 'Maybe there is no pop music that sounds like this now, but I can make it so maybe tomorrow what I like can be what everybody likes.'
Who doesn't love classic Destiny's Child or Ace of Base? There's so much amazing music from that time period, so it makes sense that we're starting to hear that pop up in records.
Big Pop songs are born of inspiration and spontaneity. The question becomes how do you create spontaneity when you're going into the studio five days a week?
