You can expect a record that I put together for you to make you feel good, a record that I put together to make you think, a record to transport you into whatever mood you want to be in. I hope that people associate my name with the brand, and I hope that people associate that brand with excellence. So, you can expect an excellent record.
Slim Thug and Z-Ro can make a record together, and even Flip and T.I. can make a record together, but there's a difference between that and Flip and T.I. holding hands and being friends. When people say they want these records, they mean that they want us all to be friends.
When I wrote 'Marvin Gaye,' my whole intention was to make a record that people would put on a record player... and just instantly make out with each other.
I love the Bach Prelude No. 2 in C Minor and had that stuck in my head: why don't I put this on Imaginaryland? So I brought it to my friend Tom Grimley who recorded That Dog's first record. I played him all my a cappella pieces, and he said, "P, you should really make a record, it would be great! You can record it at my studio and I'll put it out!"
If I want to do an orchestral record, if I want to do an acoustic record, if I want to do a death-metal record, if I want to do a jazz record - I can move in whichever direction I want, and no one is going to get upset about that. Except maybe my manager and my record company.
I feel less and less like that every year, and I guess maybe even more so with every new record that I put out. I just think, as the years go by, it's harder and harder to really find a reason to be annoyed that you made something that people want to continuously talk about. Certainly there are contexts in which the record can be discussed which will get me on the defensive and make me want to put some kind of calibration or some kind of context on what the record means in relation to my career as a whole.
I don't think any of us felt like, "Oh, we need to put joke songs on the record." If we found something funny, we would record it, and if we wanted to, we'd put it on the record. It's not really something we spent too much time agonizing over.
Whenever I approach a record, I don't really have a science to it. I approach every record differently. First record was in a home studio. Second record was a live record. Third record was made while I was on tour. Fourth record was made over the course of, like, two years in David Kahn's basement.
I try to make music with emotion and integrity. And authenticity. You can feel when something's authentic, and you can feel when it's not: you know when someone's trying to make the club record, or trying to make the girl record, or trying to make the thug record. It's none of that. It's just my emotions.
Sometimes, I want to make a record that's so schizophrenic and so all over the place, and then other times, I want to make a record that's very coherent and very short and together.
That's the strange thing about making a record. You can be in one mood for an hour, put it on a record, and you're remembered that way.
No, if it was up to me every record would be brand new studio material but Atlantic records asked me to put out a full live record because my tour really did do well last year.
When I was growing up, you would put on a KISS record or a UFO or Aerosmith record and listen to it from the first song through the last song. It's been so long since a band has put out a record like that.
I'm not going to say that every record I've put out was the greatest record in history, but I'd stand by even the bad ones. Don't make excuses, make hits.
But I think it's hard for me to only put out one record a year. Because I get too antsy. But it's good I'm learning to do that, because each record counts. And you should make it count.
We put everything we had into this record, just like we do with every other record that we make.
The decision to change the name meant we were getting serious, because we couldn't make a record if some other band had the same name as us.
I told the boys I was in a record store, thumbing though 45s, and I'd seen a record with the name the Warlocks on it. I've often wondered whether I hallucinated it, because I never saw the record again and I never heard a word about any band called the Warlocks.