I'll be in 'The Get Down' from the creator Baz Luhrmann, and it takes place in the '70s with South Bronx kids growing up at the rise of hip-hop and really when the city was at its financial worst. It's about teens struggling with violence, drugs and gangs and trying to find solace in music and all that good stuff.
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.
Hip-hop culture is deeply rooted in the wrong things. Hip-hop is about drugs right now. It's more so about drugs - about selling drugs, about using drugs - it's bad for kids.
I grew up on rap and hip-hop and fell into dance music. Hip-hop died down, and I moved more into dance music, disco and house. It feels very natural. My rhythm growing up on hip-hop and R&B was cool, fresh, and I feel comfortable with it.
When I was growing up, there were so many things I thought were stylish. Jabo jeans, V Bombers, Clarks, Vikings, Nugget watches, Lee pants with the patches, leather hats - which I still wear now. All hip-hop stuff, all South Bronx stuff.
The ghetto music of my era is hip-hop. And Parliament, and Curtis Mayfield, and Marvin Gaye, that was all the ghetto stuff when I was a baby, and then when I was a teenager it was hip-hop and we were taking all those old '70s sounds and recreating them and putting them into a hip-hop format.
This is the thing about hip-hop music and where people get it most misconstrued: It's all hip-hop. You can't say that just what I do is hip-hop, because hip-hop is all energies. James Brown can get on the track and mumble all day. But guess what? You felt his soul on those records.
My father was a musician, and I've always loved writing. I grew up in New York City during a time when hip hop music was surrounding you with the hip hop culture, and it felt natural. I was a really huge fan of the music.
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 was born and raised in the Bronx, and growing up here, you would go down the block, and on one corner you would hear bachata, on another corner some salsa, and of course there was hip-hop and R&B all over the place. So for me, it is very organic to have these combinations.
I feel like everything I do in the hip-hop world has an influence. People don't really notice what I did until somebody else does it. As far as hip-hop goes, I want to continue to make good music, and good art. I don't really follow the state of hip-hop.
The current state of music journalism is not bad, but it's not great at all. Some of the hip-hop stuff people get into is exciting, because there's a passion and there's something to explain to a more mainstream audience, so you get these passionate writers who want to express their love for rap and hip-hop, which is cool. But there are too many magazines, and the access has been diminished, so the quality of profiles has gone way down. Internet stuff can be really good, though. I like the dialogue between fans on the Internet. I think that's the best rock writing that's going on right now.
Growing up in Miami, I had all these great, strong influences. Being Cuban and the Latin influence, but also the strong hip-hop influence. I know that people everywhere listen to hip-hop, but especially being from the South, you really get that influence. You go out, you party, and it's just always there.
I'm born and raised in Dusseldorf, and my parents emigrated to Germany sometime in the '70s, so I grew up completely different from any other German. I found my love in hip-hop music. Hip-hop was delivering everything that I needed: the message, the lifestyle - everything. I fell in love with it and I'm still hip-hop.
Me growing up in the '60s and '70s, there was almost something romantic about drugs, Keith Richards taking drugs and stuff.
I've always wanted to introduce hip-hop filmmaking to film. There's hip-hop art, dance, music, but there really isn't hip-hop film. So I was trying to do that.
Man, I feel like hip-hop is - first of all, not even only with just GOOD Music, I gotta say - I think hip-hop is still alive in a strong way, man. I feel really enthused about hip-hop.