From since I could remember I've always been an artist, drawing, painting and so forth. I would also always draw made up rock n' roll characters in a band who each had their own style and personalities. I think by accident I was already becoming a fashion designer.
No matter what though, there's always rock & roll. There's rock 'n' roll in hip-hop, there's rock & roll in pop music, there's rock 'n' roll in soul, there's rock 'n' roll in country. When you see people dress and their style has an edge to it, that rebellious edge that bubbles up in every genre, that's rock & roll. Everybody still wants to be a rock star.
I think my own personal style always ends up seeping into characters that I play. I've always had a very distinct idea of fashion for myself, and what a character should wear.
Rock and roll is not an instrument. Rock and roll isn't even a style of music. Rock and roll is a spirit that's been going since the blues, jazz, bebop, soul, R&B, heavy metal, punk rock and, yes, hip-hop.
I've always been into dressing nicely. My dad's really into fashion, also. We'll always go out and buy stuff. He has his own style and I have my own style, but it's a shared thing. Same thing with my grandfather; he was really into his style, so it's just sort of been passed down, I think.
There's rock n' roll in hip-hop, there's rock n' roll in pop music, there's rock n' roll in soul, there's rock n' roll in country. When you see people dress, and their style has an edge to it, that rebellious edge that bubbles up in every genre, that's rock n' roll. Everybody still wants to be a rock star, you know?
My fascination with women's clothes began very early. My mother was a very fashionable woman. She also made her own clothes. She had these fashion magazines, and I would draw the women in them. My middle school art teacher suggested that I have a fashion drawing show.
I have absolutely no interest in rock and roll. I'm just being David Bowie. Mick Jagger is rock and roll. I mean, I go out and my music is roughly the format of rock and roll, I use the chord changes of rock and roll, but I don't feel I'm a rock and roll artist. I'd be a terrible rock artist, absolutely ghastly.
Fashion was always with me since I was young. I would always be like, 'What do I want to be when I grow up?' And it hit me when I was young - I wanted to be a fashion designer.
My first girlfriend, when I was about 18, was a fashion designer, and my sister was a fashion designer as well. I've always been into shopping, and I've always been very aesthetic, in a sense.
I always hesitate when people call me a musician.I have had no musical training. I can't play anything. I really think of myself as a performer. It's always been writing for me. I evolved with my band in rock 'n' roll through poetry, not through music.
Because fashion essentially is art, and as an artist and someone who is also a musician and an artist in regards to drawing and painting, anything I can do that expresses my feelings is something I'm really drawn to.
I am biased towards the belief that every painter must be grounded in strong and faultless drawing skills, and until one has not experimented with all styles of painting and has not comprehended their potentialities one's work is not complete. Even an abstract painter must know how to draw as well as a figurative artist. As for me, drawing has never created any problem, since I know how to draw anatomy correctly if I had to, I understand the function of muscle groups and sculpture.
I'm a fashion designer. What I do is artistic, but I'm not an artist because everything I do is destined to be sold. That's not to say that you can't be an artist and a fashion designer. I think some designers are artists.
I'm spoiled - in all ways. I've been in a rock 'n' roll band since I was 13, and we had incredible success. When it ended, it had been so good that I just looked at it as time to try something different.
My mom is a painter and an artist. She would play music, and she always had very good taste in music, fashion, and art. She was also a young single mom, so I think she had really good style; she was really free... just really inspiring in her own way and allowed me to find the direction I wanted to take in my life.
I think you can see the evolution of me as an artist, and just becoming confident and coming into my own and becoming my own person throughout each mixtape. One thing I could learn from looking back at my old mixtapes, what I could learn from my old self, is just to keep that hunger and that drive and that feeling of an underdog and also the feeling of being a fan, still lookin up to people - you just want to impress them.