Every time you go in, it's like starting over. You don't know how you did the other records. You're learning all over. It's some weird musician amnesia, or maybe the road wipes it out. |
I'm just taking one step at a time. I could zigzag one way, but it's not usually on purpose. |
We play a hip-hop song and suddenly 25 people on the left jump up and put their hands in the air; then you play Lost Cause and they're like, I don't know about this one. |
I think my whole generation's mission is to kill the cliche. |
I would love to do an electronic record. There's just so much to see and do and try. And life goes by. |
In Japan, you get on the bullet train or the airplane, and I loved the little speeches the stewardesses would do. They even do little speeches before you play gigs. |
Anything goes. You always find interesting things that way. |
There's 40 or 50 songs that nobody's heard that I've done in between albums. There's a whole evolution from Midnite Vultures to Sea Change that's never been released. |
You have to shelve a lot of your inspiration. There's only so much you can do with one record. |
It's really hard for me to commit, one way or the other. I was just always creating and seeing what came out. |
In the studio, I'm always throwing people on different instruments. |
There's never any pressure on the music having to be something. |
I hadn't done much rapping in a while. I really wasn't sure I was going to do that any more. For a couple years I thought I was done with that. It wasn't really required of me. |
Sometimes things in life take a few years to digest, and they find their way into the work later on. Sometimes I'm writing about things from eight years ago-they just took a long time to distill and come out in the appropriate way. |
If someone is making a judgment when they don't have firsthand experience, it's intolerant. How can you make a judgment on something you don't know about? |
I did that Grammys thing - I did a little freeform poem. |
Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars. |
When my nephew was 3 and 4, he would say the most genius things. He said, You're hammer macho with FBI dogs. I thought it was just one of those great lines. |
No one should drive a hard bargain with an artist. |
I just go in the studio and write on the spot and see what comes out. |