Who you are as a performer is one thing, but when you're making records, you're dealing with musicians' tastes, their goals, their wants, their needs, everyone's individual pride.
Making good records tastes good in your mouh. And when that record sells, it tastes even better.
The availability of downloads is fantastic, but you don't know which musicians are playing on the songs anymore. It's kind of making musicians faceless, you don't get musical solos on records anymore. You know who the singer is but it's the poor old musicians who suffer.
There's this celebrity thing that goes along with making records or being a rock star. I'm into this celebrity thing just enough to let me go on making records and making a living out of it.
Nobody makes art for an elite, not if they're a real artist. You try and reach as many people as possible with whatever it is that you make. If a chef is making an omelette, he wants everyone to think that it tastes great because he did it. And if it does, then that's a success because everyone eats it.
Don't make the body fit into the clothes. It really is, it's really respecting an individual and trying to cater to that individual's needs. And I guess that's what really is important for each one of us, dealing with each other in society, is look at the person in front of you, look at the individual in front of you and treat that person as a unique individual being. And I think we get along better, not just fashion-wise, but in terms of just dealing with people day-to-day.
That's the thing I love the most - making records and creating new things. That's always the thing that grabbed me. Making records is the thing that I really love.
There are a lot of musicians who are still desperately trying to pretend that it's 1998 and by having a huge marketing campaign, they somehow believe that they can sell 10 million records. That's delusional. No one sells 10 million records. The days of musicians getting rich off of selling records are done.
You have to get past the idea that music has to be one thing. To be alive in America is to hear all kinds of music constantly: radio, records, churches, cats on the street, everywhere music. And with records, the whole history of music is open to everyone who wants to hear it.
The foundation of individual rights is the assumption that people have wants and needs and are authorities on what those wants and needs are. If people's stated desires were just some kind of erasable inscription or reprogrammable brainwashing, any atrocity could be justified.
Life can be a fearful thing. Everyone needs someone drawing alongside, saying “You can do it. Don’t quit.” Everyone needs someone who believes in them. Everyone needs encouragement.
Before children, it's kind of easy to be solipsistic - you and your wife are in this hermetic little thing, and your own desires, wants, needs, tastes dictate your choices. Then, suddenly, all of that's gone.
I'm not big on trying to label it [my rap] or trying to prove people otherwise. I'm just making records that I like and that I wanna make. I'm just making records that relate to me and that relate to my life. If you listen to what I'm saying I'm not talking about anything that isn't my life. I take pride in having truthful lyrics.
We started paying everyone 100% bonuses. We removed any sort of performance management system where you put down your goals for the quarter, or the year, then try measuring against those goals because when you are dealing with innovation, that has no meaning.
A man who wants to die feels angry and full of life and desperate and bored and exhausted, all at the same time; he wants to fight everyone, and he wants to curl up in a ball and hide in a cupboard somewhere. He wants to say sorry to everyone, and he wants everyone to know just how badly they've all let him down.
To be an individual is the hardest thing in the world, because nobody likes you to be an individual. Everybody wants to kill your individuality and to make a sheep out of you. Nobody wants you to be on your own.
Whenever I hear about a child needing something, I ask myself, 'Is it what he needs or what he wants?' It isn't always easy to distinguish between the two. A child has many real needs which can and should be satisfied. His wants are a bottomless pit. He wants, for example, to sleep with his parents. He needs to be in his own bed. At Christmas he wants every toy advertised on television. He needs only one or two.