A Quote by Mayer Hawthorne
Barry White, Smokey Robinson and Curtis Mayfield are big influences for me. But I'm also a metal head. I was in a bunch of punk rock bands. The Bee Gees, hip-hop and the Beach Boys are just as much of an influence on me as Smokey.
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In the beginning, Barry and I couldn't decide if we were going got go forward with the name of the Bee Gees or just as Barry and Robin. Now we've decided to continue as the Bee Gees because we feel we can, and Maurice would have wanted it.
I'm a child of the 70's. R&B to me is Curtis Mayfield. Then a transition came in and I was part of the Hip Hop era when Sugar and Kane came out. That was a good transition for me. Then now R&B is Hip Hop and Hip Hop is R&B.
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.
When I first got to Motown, Smokey was already a fixture there. To me, he is one of the greatest songwriters and poets, so anything they ask me to do for Smokey is going to get a yes.
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?
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 have the background singers of Ray Charles, the background singers of Smokey Robinson, and the background singers of Barry White and I built a choir around that.
I hated it so much as a child. I just didn't like it when punk bands went metal, it really bothered me. It was happening left and right in the 1980s. It started I think with D.C. bands - G.I., Soul Side, they went metal. Right at that time, R.E.M. was coming out, these more kinda feminine bands, and I was more drawn to that than to go metal. And you remember MTV, with the bad metal. But even Metallica, it just wasn't my direction.
Smokey Robinson is one of my heroes as a singer and songwriter; a major influence on my own music from the very start.
Smokey Robinson is one of my heroes as a singer and songwriter, a major influence on my own music from the very start.
I cannot express how much music got me through lockdown. I re-discovered Roberta Flack, Smokey Robinson, and Aretha Franklin.
Punk rock really influenced me, the basic metal bands, Zeppelin, Stones and Floyd, and Southern rock bands. I think I was pretty well-rounded.
The first concert I ever went to was the Bee Gees. I don't know if you remember the Bee Gees. My mom took me. I was little. But my mom was a big disco fan, and - my mom took me to the Bee Gees. Looking back now, it's pretty embarrassing if your first concert was with your mom.
I was in punk rock bands, heavy metal bands, world music bands, jazz groups, any type of music that would take me. I just love music.
I remember seeing an interview from the Bee Gees and they were like, 'The biggest competition to the Bee Gees is the Bee Gees.' They just kept trying to top themselves and write better songs, and I'm just always trying to do that.
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.
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