When I was 12 or 13, the hyphy movement was beginning to bubble. And you had local acts such as the Federation or E-40, Mac Dre, and Too Short that the local radio station would play all the time. You'd hear E-40 as much as you'd hear Jay Z.
I grew up in Oakland, California, and there was a really active scene in the Bay Area. Everyone else knew it as the 'Hyphy Movement' of Mac Dre, E-40, and The Pack.
I always heard 50 Cent, Da Brat, Lil' Kim, all that in the house. My mom's playing them - 50 Cent, Kanye West.
I don't feel that 40 is anything these days. Our life expectancy is so much greater that maybe 50 is the new 40.
Travis Scott is definitely a big inspiration. Lil Wayne was a big one. Lil Wayne, 50 Cent. Those were my two, like, big ones growing up. Then I got into Mac Miller, Wiz Khalifa phase.
I believe that this could very well be looked back on as the sin of our generation...I believe that our children and their children, 40 or 50 years from now, are going to ask me, what did you do while 40 million children became orphans in Africa?
Jimmy Iovine, he pretty much started off as an engineer and a producer, and then he started up a label. Then he built his label to have big artists like Dr. Dre and 50 Cent. Then he started up a headphone company and made it a billion dollar business. He's a genius to me.
When I first heard 'Pearly Gates' by Mobb Deep and 50 Cent growing up, the rapper Prodigy had a line about wanting to beat Jesus up. I wasn't religious, but I'd never been introduced to something like that. I was scared and mad, but then I asked why I felt like that.
While growing up we all did our own work' I remember, we had a sign on our bathroom door which said 'Gandhiji cleaned his own bathrooms, so must you.'
I and most Australians want our immigration policy radically reviewed and that of multiculturalism abolished. I believe we are in danger of being swamped by Asians. Between 1984 and 1995, 40 per cent of all migrants coming into this country were of Asian origin. They have their own culture and religion, form ghettos and do not assimilate.
There was a period after my first solo album came out that about 50 per cent of my work was with symphonies and big bands. We did the Captain and Tennille as well, but it ended up being about 50-50.
Listen- my relationship with radio on a personal level is nothing but a one way love-a-thon... I love radio, I grew up on radio. That's where I heard Buddy Holly, that's where I heard Chuck Berry. I couldn't believe it the first time I heard one of my records on the radio, and I STILL love hearing anything I'm involved with on radio, and some of my best friends were from radio. But we were on different sides of that argument, there's no question about that.
We fight our way through the massed and leveled collective safe taste of the Top 40, just looking for a little something we can call our own. But when we find it and jam the radio to hear it again it isn't just ours -- it is a link to thousands of others who are sharing it with us. As a matter of a single song this might mean very little; as culture, as a way of life, you can't beat it.
How did we lose our culture? Black people used to all do the same thing on Saturdays. We all watched "Soul Train" and "American Bandstand", got our fashion and dance tips, and then we emulated it and bought those records that we heard. Now it seems like there is no culture. The school of fish are all separate. Everybody's just randomized, listening to their own thing in their earbuds, and there's no uniformity. That bothers me.
The things that inform student culture are created and controlled by the unseen culture, the sociological aspects of our climbing culture, our 'me' generation, our yuppie culture, our SUVs, or, you know, shopping culture, our war culture.
We have our own history, our own language, our own culture. But our destiny is also tied up with the destinies of other people - history has made us all South Africans.