A Quote by John Legend
My first big break came with Lauryn Hill on a track called Everything is Everything, I played piano on that track way back in 1998.
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I became interested in the delay, having sounds recorded and played back and then come back. I did many different configurations of sending signals from one track back to another track, or to the same track, or crisscrossing them and so forth. I worked on masking the delays so when I played into the machine, I would make long tones and collect sounds in such a way that you didn't hear the delay, although sometimes you did.
I definitely listened to Lauryn Hill - her's was like the first album I bought myself. Brandy's Never Say Never and Lauryn Hill's The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill were always in rotation for a couple of years.
I played everything. I played lacrosse, baseball, hockey, soccer, track and field. I was a big believer that you played hockey in the winter and when the season was over you hung up your skates and you played something else.
That's the way I came up, writing and recording at home. I developed by playing everything myself. I was a drummer first and that's my favorite instrument to play. Once I get the drums done, everything else comes real quick. Also, we track in my friends' garage, which is really small ... there's not really room to record live with a band.
I listen to everything - from Sarah McLachlan and Alanis Morissette all the way down to rap like Scarface, UGK and Lauryn Hill.
I did everything to break in. I even recorded covers of Alicia Keys and Lauryn Hill, and put them on Youtube in the hopes that Drake would discover me like he did Justin Bieber.
I got home, picked up my ax, turned on the four-track and just played it ... I played three solos back to back on Cemetery Gates ... the next morning, the second and third solos weren't bad, but the first had that first take magic ! .. I didn't touch it.
The most important thing for me is to have as much control over what's going on in front of me as I possibly can, so because of that, I don't play to a click track, and I don't have anything on the grid. Everything is triggered by me. Everything is played by me. Everything is within my control.
I graduated with about 23 people, so if you were the least bit athletic, you kind of had to play everything. So I played baseball, basketball, football, ran track, and played golf.
I played everything. I played volleyball, did track, cross-country, but basketball was my main sport, my main focus.
In England I played everything - swimming, athletics, football, rugby, badminton, cricket - all of that stuff. I was in the first teams for all the sports at Brighton, played on the wing in rugby, and ran 100m, 200m, 400m, and did long jump and even the javelin at one point. In the States I did a bit of track, but mainly I was there for the boxing.
I grew up in San Antonio, Texas, and went to a big high school called Douglas McArthur where there was a lot of track and a lot of football. It was a bit like 'Friday Night Lights.' I used to spend a lot of time at the track.
Technically, my first acting job was in one of my videos for a song called 'Retrospect For Life,' which Lauryn Hill directed and featured an actress by the name of N'bushe Wright, who played my girlfriend who was about to be pregnant. I remember being so nervous about it, but now I feel like I can conquer the world with it.
I appreciate people who make hip-hop... the way A Tribe Called Quest and Lauryn Hill and KRS-One did it.
I love short track. I competed in short track, I was a world champion in 1986 but at that point in time it wasn't in the Olympic Games so I moved into long track. Short track is a blast to skate and it's a blast to watch.
I get nostalgic for things that didn't really exist. I might have a cassette from the first time a Melle Mel track, say, got played on radio in Manchester. And it might be a copy of a copy of a copy of a tape and there's all these weird nuances and distortions that have affected what I know as the truth, if you like, of that track.
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