Music had been going on a long time before that. You have to remember that before rock n' roll there were a bunch of jazz musicians all doing heroin. That sh*t has been around a long time.
This is going to sound really corny, but it's the way I feel: Musicians have been around for a really long time. It's a really, really old job. When you look at the way that a small band toured back in the '50s, it's similar to the way that a small band tours now. It's been this long tradition, and when you meet somebody who has been doing this for a really long time, you have to have tremendous respect for them.
Rock and roll is not an instrument. Rock and roll isn't even a style of music. Rock and roll is a spirit that's been going since the blues, jazz, bebop, soul, R&B, heavy metal, punk rock and, yes, hip-hop.
Pharoahe Monch is a long time supporter of my music and I'm a long time supporter of his music so when we met each other it was almost like a natural occurrence.I met him before a few years earlier and we were just politicking with each other and we had a conversation about possibly doing something but our schedules have always been in conflict.
Mac Dre has been around a long time. E-40's been around a long time. JT the Bigga Figga, Rappin 4-Tay. There's been a lot of guys that been around a long time, but they all grew up listening to Too $hort.
I was being ridiculed for going to school... But, you see, I had looked hard at the other musicians and the whole show-business scene... They were doing with jazz musicians what they usually reserved for rock n' roll cats: making them overnight successes, then overnight antiques.
I'm also performing regularly in Southern California with two bands. As a solo artist doing acoustic sets and a member of the Jenerators, my rock n roll band that has been around for a long time now.
Never before have I written so long a letter. I'm afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts, and pray long prayers?
Jazz was the beginning of rhythm music, which developed into rock and roll. But what the jazz musicians lost because they were so far from their homeland was the intricate rhythms of African music.
Im also performing regularly in Southern California with two bands. As a solo artist doing acoustic sets and a member of the Jenerators, my rock n roll band that has been around for a long time now.
I've always been surrounded by music. The arts have been in my life for a long long time. It was just always around. I can remember as far back as third grade, me rapping, pencil on the desk rapping type s**t. So I always had a passion for it.
I remember, before I started high school, I was really intrigued by the Buddy Holly/James Dean style of glasses. This was a long, long time before they were sold at every Urban Outfitters.
As long as there are musicians who have a passion for spontaneity, for creating something thats never been before, the art form of jazz will flourish.
As long as there are musicians who have a passion for spontaneity, for creating something that's never been before, the art form of jazz will flourish.
The music industry went through such a strange stretch in 1977, especially in this country, with the whole punk rock thing coming about. Punk was rebellious-and justified in that response-but it had very little to do with music, and so it created a highly-charged but frighteningly floundering atmosphere that I found very, very disheartening. Musical quality for me has always been an important part of rock'n'roll-and winning recognition for that has long been an uphill battle all the way. Punk seemed like rock'n'roll utterly without the music.
Don't get me wrong: politicians have been lying for a long time, long before Donald Trump was born, but the degree of just nonstop rage, grievance, prevarication, I haven't seen, probably because we haven't had a direct line from a politician's id to the public before.
For me, let's keep jazz as folk music. Let's not make jazz classical music. Let's keep it as street music, as people's everyday-life music. Let's see jazz musicians continue to use the materials, the tools, the spirit of the actual time that they're living in, as what they build their lives as musicians around.