My musical style was developed basically by listening to music. The music I like helped to mold my style. I used to listen to the majority of down south music when I was a shorty coming up.
I was growing up in a communist time, especially, and the other music, the western music, was banned, so on radio half of the music was Chopin. So my colleagues and I were a little bit allergic to this music because it was everywhere - everywhere!
I feel like it's a necessary part of musical development to go through that phase where you think that your favorite style of music is the only style of music, and I thought that for a while.
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.
When I started out, I didn't feel like I was really accepted in the music or comedy communities, and I was somewhere on the edge, but now I feel like I'm accepted in both, which is extremely gratifying.
The place of electronic music, culturally and socially, is today completely different - it is now everywhere, and it has been totally accepted. Consequently, there is now a younger generation that is more focused on making great electronic music, good parties, and having fun, where there is not any more so much need for cultural and ideological statements in electronic music itself.
My personal style reflects my music. My music and how I dress is just how I express myself; it's just me. My music is urban pop, and my style of dressing is urban but still girly. I like that combination. The contrast is very nice.
Not everyone's going to like my music. People might not like my music, because I'm just not their style of music that they like to listen to.
I take a lot from everywhere. I take from music, architecture, novels, and plays. Anywhere that hits you.
I get I style inspiration everywhere: the streets of New York, magazines... everywhere!
Make music when I want to in whatever style I would like to. That is something that I know that I'm not the only Nightwish member who has that. That's a luxury we can take, and we will.
Take the cards out of your wallet. A debit card is accepted just about everywhere that credit cards are, and you'll be spending money you have - always a good thing.
Basically my influences have been American influences. It's been blues, gospel, swing era music, bebop music, Broadway show music, classical music. It's like making a stew. You put all these various ingredients in it. You season it with this. You put that in it. You put the other in it. You mix it all up and it comes out something neat, something that you created.
Italians don't have a unique style like France or Spain or Germany or the UK, it's different everywhere you go. The style of the girl in Milan is really architectural and modern. In Naples it's a completely different style, it's more dark. I'm sure our style was more precise in the past in the '50s or '60s where everything was very Sophia Loren. It's weird because obviously outside of Italy you think of one country, but when you're in the country you know how different the country is from the north to the center to the south to the island. There are so many differences.
The more I started going through my own things in life, my faith got put to the test, and I had to believe that God is real in my heart, my lord and savior Jesus Christ, and I can't run from that. I'll always put that in my music or it just wouldn't be right. People can take it or leave it, I really don't care, because it's for me to put it on records. And I will continue to put more of a spiritual nature in my music.
I think there's a difference between the type of folk music that people put into the box of "folk music" and then there's the kind of folk music that I aspire to and am in awe of, and that is the kind of folk music where it's very limited tools - in most cases a guitar, in a self-taught style that is idiosyncratic and particular to that musician.