A Quote by Mayer Hawthorne
I grew up in the '80s and '90s listening to Public Enemy and Mobb Deep and the Smashing Pumpkins. I don't even know what it was like in the '60s - I wasn't alive then - so the Mayer Hawthorne sound is taking what I can learn from the classics, and blending it with my hip-hop DJ and producer background and punk-rock bands that I played in as a kid.
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I wouldn't compare my sound on the mixtape to anything, but my influences are like - the minimal amount of hip-hop that I actually do know - because I didn't grow up listening to hip-hop like that. No one really put me on to hip-hop like that... My dad's from Jamaica and my mom is from Barbados, so that's really the stuff I grew up listening to.
My father played guitar, so I always wanted to play for that reason. But I think the biggest reason was just the '90s in general - growing up listening to the Smashing Pumpkins, Green Day and bands like that, and going to concerts and thinking it was the coolest thing in the world.
Socially, hip-hop has done more for racial camaraderie in this country than any one thing. 'Cause guys like me, my kids - everyone under 45 either grew up loving hip-hop or hating hip-hop, but everyone under 45 grew up very aware of hip-hop. So when you're a white kid and you're listening to this music and you're being exposed to it every day on MTV, black people become less frightening. This is just a reality. What hip-hop has done bringing people together is enormous.
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.
In the late '80s and early '90s, there was a slightly retro drum sound that was popular in hip-hop music called the 808 bass drum sound. It was the bass drum sound on the 808 drum machine, and it's very deep and very resonant, and was used as the backbone as a lot of classic hip-hop tracks.
I really love rap music. I grew up in the '80s and '90s with Public Enemy, N.W.A., LL Cool J - I'm a hip-hop encyclopedia. But I got kind of frustrated with the chauvinistic side of rap music, the one that makes it hard to write songs about love and relationships.
A lot of the things I do deal with my race, but my race is who I am. I'm an American kid who grew up listening to predominantly hip-hop. I will talk about hip-hop as the music I grew up listening to, and I think sometimes people like to put it as, 'Oh, well, he's talking about black things.' And, yeah, they are, but that's my American identity.
I grew up listening to a lot of rap music. My dad's a DJ from Brooklyn, and he's a very soulful guy, so he always spun a lot of hip-hop, and that's where I get a lot of my hip-hop influence.
I came up playing in both punk rock bands and hip-hop bands, and I found a more universal way of reaching people, especially with music that has a message to it.
You know, my era of DJing was the 90s. I think that was one of the best eras of music, period. From dancehall to hip hop to rock to pop to R&B to everything. I just like that era of music, so I just listen to a lot of 90s overall but definitely 90s hip hop.
I was born into hip hop and reggae, and then I started listening to more hardcore and punk bands like Bad Brains and the Suicidal Tendencies; they opened up a whole new world for me. They had something to say, and I could relate to them.
The key moments in your life are when you realize how exciting music can be, like when you hear Nevermind for the first time. I grew up in the '70s and '80s. I was introduced to hip-hop when it first came out. Hip-hop music will always be my first love. That's why I love playing the drums. Any day of the week, I would rather listen to a hip-hop album than a rock album.
I grew up listening to Tupac, Biggie and other hip hop artists in the 90s. To this day, their music is still some of my favorite.
I grew up listening to everything. I was in rock n' roll bands and punk bands, and I loved bluegrass and country music, too. Then, when I moved to Nashville, I put out a very traditional country record because that's just what you do. I had a bunch of very traditional country songs. Next thing you know, you're a country singer.
I was in bands, like everyone else, when I was 16, 17; I was a little skater listening to Dead Kennedy's and Steel Pole Bath Tub. It was through early 90s Hip Hop that I found my way to Soul and Funk, and then out the other side into beats.
I kind of idolized older punk-rock and hip-hop bands, and I was, like, 15 when I started the Beastie Boys. And what business did we having doing that at that age?
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