This thing that I do with caring about the message in my music, it's not separate from my work as a commercial artist; they're totally one and the same. I'm always going to be thinking about what my voice means.
As always, with acting, you can't be too self-conscious. You shouldn't care about what people are thinking about you at the time because they're not caring about you, they're caring about the character.
When I'm writing a lyric, I totally forget about the music. I'm just looking at the lyric and thinking about it almost as a separate entity. And then I'll go to my keyboard with all the lyrics printed out and try to think of how to make this a complete musical thing. I've got a very basic keyboard with some presets.
I got serious about performing, and I got serious about acting. It's very funny; singing has always been a very separate thing for me - until I went to college. I just studied musical theater because I was like, 'That means I can study voice and acting in the same major, and I won't have to double major.' Now I do musicals for a living.
Why was the painting made? What ideas of the artist can we sense? Can the personality and sensitivity of the artist be felt when studying the work? What is the artist telling us about his or her feelings about the subject? What response do I get from the message of the artist? Do I know the artist better because of the painting?
When I'm up on stage, I'm thinking more about my fans and about myself as a singer and an artist. When I'm at home being a daddy, the last thing I'm thinking about is being an artist. It is two things that I never really put together.
I'm a commercial director; I do some very very commercial stuff in the commercial world. My music videos are always analyzed. I need to think about what the audience is going to think.
There's a certain thing when you start getting into your late thirties or early forties where you stop caring. Not to the extent where you stop caring about the music, you just stop caring about what anyone thinks of you, and you just kind of let it go - let the chips fall where they may.
An artist in 2014 who is thinking about album sales is either sadly deluded or has to make so many commercial compromises that it sort of takes the joy out of making music.
If you're an artist or someone creative, it's all about cheap rent and not having to work for a living. That's what it's always been about. Unless you're a trust-funder or you somehow score a great part-time job or you work for another artist, you're going to go where you can afford to live.
I'm from the school of putting a lot of hours of practice into playing. But at the same time you have to write original music - that's really important, because that's the things that's going to separate you from everybody else, that's going to give you your unique voice as a music that you create.
I'm an artist with a message, and my message is more for society, casting the mirror onto them and saying, 'Hey, this is what we look like, what are we going to do about it, how are we going to use what we've been through to aid where we're going.'
Stop thinking about writing as art. Think of it as work. If you’re an artist, whatever you do is going to be art. If you’re not an artist, at least you can do a good day’s work.
I didn't get played on radio or TV for 3 years. They all told me the same thing: it was too urban. They don't see grime music as commercial music, but all music is commercial; it's how you make it. That's what I'm trying to say.
To say that an artist sells out means that an artist is making a conscious choice to compromise his music, to to weaken his music for the sake of commercial gain.
When I'm shaving, I'm thinking about what I need to accomplish that day. If it's game day, I'm thinking about schemes, thinking about my matchup for that game. If it's practice, I'm thinking about what film we're going to watch. Or if it's a recovery day, I'm thinking of what body parts are aching and what I want to work on.
What I don't like about teaching is hearing myself say the same thing. I mean, you just want to sort of shoot yourself after a while. But you don't have a million different ways of thinking about what you have been thinking about for many years. And then there's the truism that you're only as good as your students. If they're not into what's going on, it doesn't matter who you are.