I saw something in the news, so I copied it. I put a piece of tape - I have obviously a laptop, personal laptop - I put a piece of tape over the camera. Because I saw somebody smarter than I am had a piece of tape over their camera.
Maybe I'll start from the initial idea, what motivated me to do that. In 1953, I had access to a tape recorder. Tape recorders were not widely available. There was no cassette tape back then. It was a Sears Roebuck tape machine. I put a microphone in the window and recorded the ambience.
Tape machines are effects boxes as well because each tape machine has its own sound. You can over-load a tape machine or you can bump it a certain way so it compresses or makes a sound, tape saturation.
I definitely have a piece of tape over my computer at home.
"I'm going to show you I haven't given you permission because clearly you're not grown up enough to understand that, not having given you permission, you can't just come look in my house." And I won't know if they're coming and looking or not... so I put a piece of tape over it.
When we had the San Francisco Tape Music Center, we had a couple of Ampex tape machines there, and I could string tape from one machine, past the heads, and over to the next machine to the supply-reel amp, and have another delay there.
The history of horror movies goes back a long way... of people trying to convincingly be terrified when looking at a piece of tape on the side of the camera box. I have a whole new respect for it.
That first tape I did dropped in 2009. It was just for fun, I'm like 'I'm just going to do something to have fun.' Everyone was just 'put out a tape. You're young. You've got money. It ain't gonna hurt you. Who's it gonna hurt?' So what I ended up doing was I put out the tape, pressed up 20,000 CDs, flooded the streets.
In a way, there's nothing more intimate than a piece of jewelry. A painting is hung on somebody's wall. You put a piece of furniture in your home. But jewelry is worn by a person, so there is a fascination with the history of a piece.
I mean I'm not smarter than the market, but I can recognize a good tape and a bad tape. I recognize when it's right and when it's wrong and that's what my strength is.
I was 14-15 when I first saw Michael Jackson dance, and I thought, 'How can he move like that?' I started following him. We didn't have TV in those days, and could access videos on VCR. But who in Gujarat would keep a MJ tape? After a year or so, I knew somebody from Mumbai who got that tape for me.
All the dialogue on tape, and we'd play the tape in performance. Then I thought it'd be interesting if the actor's repeated what they heard on the tape, but at a slower speed, so we'd get a web of language.
The tape measure doesn't lie. Get that tape measure out and put it on your hips and your waist. Keep checking it. And keep exercising and cutting those calories down until that tape measure gets close to where you were in your prime.
My mom had a tape of Patsy Cline's greatest hits, and whenever we were in the car, she would put it on, and it got to the point where I knew all the words to every one of the songs, and I knew what order they came in on the tape.
I know how to tell a story to a thousand people. Sometimes I don't know how to tell a story to a piece of tape on a wall and a camera.
There are women who are wishing that they were that piece of tape right now.
When I put out my first mixtape, '50 Cent is the Future,' it was the first tape where an artist did the entire tape in song format.