A Quote by Hardwell

I actually listen to hip-hop to unwind, so that's really the music I use to clear my mind. I find listening to someone like Dr Dre helps me to take a break and find a groove again.
I wouldn't compare my sound on the mixtape to anything, but my influences are like - the minimal amount of hip-hop that I actually do know - because I didn't grow up listening to hip-hop like that. No one really put me on to hip-hop like that... My dad's from Jamaica and my mom is from Barbados, so that's really the stuff I grew up listening to.
I actually grew up break-dancing. When you break-dance you listen to hip-hop and rap, so I've been listening to that music since I was a kid.
I am so all over the place with my music taste, it's ridiculous. It is! I mean, I find myself listening to weird things like hardcore techno music and then I'll be listening to mainstream hip-hop music. But it's like I am so crazy with my music taste. I'll listen to a song, I'll become obsessed with it, and then I'm on to the next one. So it's just very inconsistent.
I love jazz. So to me, there are two main types of jazz. There's dancing jazz, and then there's listening jazz. Listening jazz is like Thelonius Monk or John Coltrane, where it's a listening experience. So that's what I like; I like to make stuff that you listen to. It's not really meant to get you up; it's meant to get your mind focused. That's why you sit and listen to jazz. You dance to big band or whatever, but for the most part, you sit and listen to jazz. I think it comes from that aesthetic, trying to take that jazz listening experience and put it on hip-hop.
I was listening to Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd, because that was new music for me. I really hadn't been up on them. I mean, I'd heard of them, but I wasn't up on their music. And I kept listening to Radiohead, and I was like, Man, I want to make hip-hop that feels like Radiohead. I want to make hip-hop that can use guitars and soul and jazz and just fuse it all together.
When I'm actually creating music, I try not to listen to the hip-hop records that are going on, because I think, subconsciously, we steal from each other. If you're listening to a record and it's really hot, then you'll be looking for something that feels like that, or that has a version of it.
My definition of hip hop is taking elements from many other spheres of music to make hip hop. Whether it be breakbeat, whether it be the groove and grunt of James Brown or the pickle-pop sounds of Kraftwerk or Yellow Magic Orchestra, hip hop is also part of what they call hip-house now, or trip hop, or even parts of drum n' bass.
I was really raised on hip-hop, and hip-hop introduced me basically to all the music I listen to now.
The beautiful thing about hip-hop is it's like an audio collage. You can take any form of music and do it in a hip-hop way and it'll be a hip-hop song. That's the only music you can do that with.
In New York, my dad raised me to listen to everything like hip-hop, rock and country music. When I moved to Dallas, I started listening to whatever I wanted to listen to.
I find that people in American are often much more purist. If you're into hip-hop, you're totally into hip-hop - you wear the uniform, that's all you listen to. If you're a goth, you're totally a goth - you've got, like, 4,000 piercings, black hair, you really go for it.
I was a hip-hop head. When I really found my own lane in music, it was hip-hop. I wanted to make hip-hop music. And I did, I made a lot of hip-hop music.
I've got all of the old school vinyls from the '70s - even further back, like the jazz music in the '40s, '50s, '60s. Then I've got all the '80s stuff underground, hip-hop when hip-hop really first started. The '90s stuff. All of the good stuff, because I'm really into music, and it helps me create new songs now.
You start learning English in fifth grade. I was 12. But even before then I was listening to American music. My neighbor was a really big hip-hop fan, so he taught me everything around hip-hop.
Socially, hip-hop has done more for racial camaraderie in this country than any one thing. 'Cause guys like me, my kids - everyone under 45 either grew up loving hip-hop or hating hip-hop, but everyone under 45 grew up very aware of hip-hop. So when you're a white kid and you're listening to this music and you're being exposed to it every day on MTV, black people become less frightening. This is just a reality. What hip-hop has done bringing people together is enormous.
Dr. Dre is the most influential artist and producer in hip-hop history.
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