I'm not really a Democrat or a Republican, but I don't like rhetoric.
Sir Mix-a-Lot
Successful people jump at opportunity and take advantage of it.
I think what's beautiful when you're looking at artists like Macklemore and you're looking at artists like Ayron Jones, they're proud of Seattle and they're bringing it back. Seattle's a real music town. When you act ashamed of that, you should be pushed outta the game as far as I'm concerned.
I follow politics in a big way, and always have since I was a kid. I've got opinions, but they're opinions on both sides - not just anti-Republican, which is a real popular thing for a rap artist to do. If you dis Republicans, nobody will get mad. I think the two-party system sucks. It's absolutely ignorant.
I grew up listening to a lot of Kraftwerk, Gary Numan, Devo, all that stuff.
I have never met a successful person who talked about failing. The glass is always half full. I don't even like being around negative talkers.
Yeah, I put out some goofy stuff. I had no idea who I was as an artist at all before 'Posse on Broadway.'
Inventors often don't know how to pitch their ideas. So many people in Silicon Valley want to hear you say 'disruptive,' and tote a 'platform.' They repeat buzzwords over and over, and I think it intimidates a real inventor.
I'll tell you who doesn't get enough credit, Soulja Boy. He was the first one to do something, post it, yank it down, and sell more records because of it.
I never envisioned being number one for five weeks, knocking Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men off the charts. That's the scariest thing and the greatest thing that ever happened to me.
When I came out with 'Posse on Broadway,' I decided, enough with trying to imitate New York, enough with trying to imitate L.A., let's just be Seattle. And rock, grunge, followed right after 'Posse on Broadway' and Seattle just exploded.
I still love 'Baby Got Back.' I will perform it until I drop.
Most of my money is more brand association deals. I own my publishing so that's allowed me to leverage my brand in ways that most people cannot or will not because they won't make any money doing it.
A lot of people have said 'people should see you work in the studio,' because a lot of people don't realize I'm an actual engineer. I don't walk in and have some guy grab the board. I have my own studio and soldered every wire in the studio.
I love Stuart Scott. There are a lot of people that tore down barriers that we don't really acknowledge sometimes. He was one. I think James Brown was too. That cat was a soul brother when it wasn't very popular to be one.
I like kitchens. I'm a kitchen and bathroom freak.
I build a lot of stuff, but I'm not a 'construction guy.' But I'm one of these guys that sits with his hands on his hips and tells you I'm gonna fix everything.
Pop culture says that if a black girl is to be taken seriously, she has to assimilate and be as white as possible, to the point of bleaching her hair blonde.
I thought the grunge scene was cool. This is going to sound weird, but I remember doing a concert at a tavern in the mid-'80s with Nirvana.
Pop concerts create an audience for Pops concerts, not an audience for classical symphonic concerts.
After 'Return Of The Bumpasaurus' in '96, I just got away from music for, like, a year. Literally, I think I produced two songs in a year. I was totally kicking it, running around.
In hip-hop, what you have is you have a lot of formulaic-type bands or rappers that come up. They saw something on the radio, and they want to mimic that formula. And that's just boring. I don't wanna record something just to make money; I want to record something to enjoy it and have fun because I'm a music lover.
I love listening to old school stuff. I listen to some new cats out here, but I'm really into, like, Tech N9ne and his clique; I really like Eminem and those guys - cats that got real flow: I really connect with that. But I do love rock. I love a lot of electronica because I love programming synthesizers.
Do I do bar mitzvahs? No. You know, you've gotta draw a line somewhere.
That was the coolest thing about 'Baby Got Back.' The establishment didn't embrace the song, which is what kept me from being the next pop guy to fizzle out and get laughed at, get dissed on TV. That helped save me. The fact that MTV banned the record made the record, in a weird way.
What I liked about grunge was the realness. It wasn't pretty, it wasn't glamorous.
When I did 'Baby Got Back,' I did it to be unpopular.
Bottom line: Black men like curves. When they're crooning to women about how beautiful they are in an R&B song, the ladies you see in the video don't reflect what those guys like.
I tell people all the time, I'm Mix-A-Lot. I'm not a rocket scientist.
When I did 'Baby Got Back,' that was just a reflection of the African-American community. We've always liked curves, and a lot of people misunderstood it because let's face it: 20 years prior to 'Baby Got Back,' the only images you saw of a black woman on television were she was probably 300 pounds and cleaning the house with a rag on her head.
Baby Got Back' was already a reflection of what was going on. I didn't see it as this gigantic political statement.
Look at Macklemore! Perfect comparison, we're two artists from the same city who both had meteoric rises at different periods. I probably sold more albums, because in that era you couldn't steal them; you had to go to a record store to buy them. But Macklemore had more power.
When you get haters you actually feel like you're a success.
I tried gimmicky stuff 'cause I wanted to get some attention, and remember, you know, in the rap world Seattle was a cave. There was no light.
The only thing that doesn't drop in a down market is entertainment money.
