I'm not one that just throws music out there to keep it coming, and all that. I believe in the craft, and the time it takes to really nurture something and put a lot of effort into the details.
With 'Korra' we've really taken a lot of time to craft it. We're aiming pretty high, and in order to keep up the quality it just takes a lot of time and a lot or work.
I was always interested in music, I felt it was time to do it, coming out of the punk scene [1979]. I thought it was ideal that anyone could just put together a group and make it work. Then, of course, it became a little more detailed after starting it and realizing that it was something serious, not just a one-off situation. I had to put a lot more into it. Also I did it to get a lot of things out of my system, things that had been put there while I was growing up in my family. A sort of exorcizing of demons.
A lot of people just love music, especially a lot of aspiring artists. They just want to jump in and start making music. They don't really take time to grow and appreciate the craft.
On set, I like to be treated just like a normal adult actor. We all put as much time and effort into our craft as adults, and maybe even more because we have school to do and a lot of things to figure out.
I don't want to let ourselves down, so we put extra time, extra effort into every single thing we put out. I think that's why it takes a bit of time for us, but we really want to perfect the quality of the stuff we put out, so we can be represented to the world as a K-pop group.
I wanna be a part of the generation that throws out money, throws out time, throws out all that we are against something bigger than ourselves.
I feel like you should be confident in whatever you do, and a lot of my new music [that's coming out] I want people to judge more so than the music I've put out recently, because I feel like it's really changed a lot.
I spent a lot of time, a lot of energy trying to be a better artist and I still [do]. I spend a lot of time focusing on my craft. If you're going to take your passion into something beyond just something for fun on the side, you got to spend a lot of time on it to be great, and then you've got to make smart decisions about who you collaborate with [and] where you live [to] put yourself in the right situations to meet the right people to catch those breaks.
I should mention something that nobody ever thinks about, but proofreading takes a lot of time. After you write something, there are these proofs that keep coming, and there's this panicky feeling that 'This is me and I must make it better.'
I think to be successful at anything you have to put in a hell of a lot of effort. Pick your battles. I picked music, put in a lot of effort, and it's worked.
We did so much music together, before he got locked up, it's just, Gucci, he don't hold on to music. He like, Man, let's put this out, let's put that out, let's put this out. That's what he do. He like to put out a lot of music.
If you believe that you can't do something, then you're not going to do it. If you believe you can, and you're willing to put in the effort and figure out a way to do it, then the majority of the time, you can.
Everything is important to me... Forgetting the small details is not wise when you care so much about your music and band. So, I try to put effort and focus into the artwork as well, so it best represents the music that I've put my heart and soul into.
A lot of my colleagues just don't really realize that they have to work in order to get the interest of an audience, especially with young kids, especially because it [classical music] is not that popular. You don't see it on TV, you don't hear it on radio, so you really gotta put an effort into promoting classical music.
It's not easy to know who you are and it's very painful and takes a lot of time and that is why a lot of people don't want to put in the effort.
But music raises a lot of issues. Music is something that matters to people a lot, and they put a lot of passion into it. And I think when you have an area like that, you're gonna find a lot of issues coming up.