In some ways it's hard to see electronic music as a genre because the word "electronic" just refers to how it's made. Hip-hop is electronic music. Most reggae is electronic. Pop is electronic. House music, techno, all these sorts of ostensibly disparate genres are sort of being created with the same equipment.
I come from a world of hip-hop, but I love all types of music, and that's what Revolt will reflect. It will be home to electronic dance music, pop, hip-hop.
I grew up listening to pop; I grew up listening to '60s pop music, the Beatles, the Monkees, Herman's Hermits and all that stuff. So I had a very strong background of listening to great pop music.
Hip-hop has permeated pop culture for decades. For a long time, though, it seemed to permeate it in a such a way that it never really got its just due. Now, hip-hop seems to be getting that recognition and is more widely accepted, which is great.
I keep my hip-hop as hip-hop, my R&B as R&B and my pop as pop. The ability to cross those boundaries and do all these things effectively is not commonly done.
I think hip hop is dead. It's all pop now. If you call it hip hop, then you need to stop. Hip hop was a movement. Hip hop was a culture. Hip hop was a way of life. It's all commercial now.
My definition of hip hop is taking elements from many other spheres of music to make hip hop. Whether it be breakbeat, whether it be the groove and grunt of James Brown or the pickle-pop sounds of Kraftwerk or Yellow Magic Orchestra, hip hop is also part of what they call hip-house now, or trip hop, or even parts of drum n' bass.
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.
When I was growing up, hip-hop music existed as American thing. If you listened to it you were listening to an American subculture, whereas now you're just listening to pop music that everyone shares. I think that's big.
I listen to a lot of crazy stuff like pop, techno, rock, hip-hop, rap, baladas, bachata...my iPod is crazy. I like listening to a lot of stuff in different languages, so my music is always out there for me.
In the little rural town I grew up in, I missed out on the pop music of the time, the '80s, and now enjoy in retrospect. It's as an adult that I've opened it up to dance, hip-hop, R&B, and even big pop songs.
Hip-Hop got turned into Hit Pop,
The second a record was number one on the pop charts.
But don't skip on the heart, it gotta start in the ghetto,
Let no one forget about the hard part.
I am a pop and R&B singer. I'm not necessarily an Indian singer or musician. I sing in English, and the music I do blends hip hop, pop, R&B, and soul.
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.
It doesn't get any more underground, conscious or indie than Macklemore, Ryan Lewis, but because they got a couple of really big pop hits, actually some of the biggest pop hits that hip-hop has ever seen, people are missing that part of their story. People are not counting that blessing.
I think there's something antagonistic about bedroom pop. We're reappropriating pop and saying you don't have to be an ex-Disney star to make pop music. You can be from Shepherd's Bush and have spent most of your life listening to the Smiths and still make a pop record.