A Quote by Kamasi Washington

It's either, like, 'Your album was the first jazz album I listened to,' or, like, 'My friend took me to this show, and I've never been to a jazz show before, but, man, I'm so happy I came. I can't wait to go home and see more.' And you can feel it in the crowd, too. You can see the groups of people that don't really know what to expect.
It's been really fun to see with each album when I change to see the fans of the show emulate my style and with the first record a lot of the kids in the crowd were wearing neck ties like I was and now you'll see a lot of girls with pink hair. It's cool, it's actually really neat.
Jazz is smooth and cool. Jazz is rage. Jazz flows like water. Jazz never seems to begin or end. Jazz isn't methodical, but jazz isn't messy either. Jazz is a conversation, a give and take. Jazz is the connection and communication between musicians. Jazz is abandon.
Jazz sometimes can be really complicated and inaccessible to people because they don't know what to start with. You can start with something that you love, but if you start with something that you hate, then it's like, 'You know what, I hate jazz.' It took me a lot of time to catch on to jazz, too.
We don't live in a jazz world, unfortunately. I think if I had lived in a jazz world, I would have done OK. I'm not sure I would have done great. I'm a lover of jazz music, so I would have been happy, don't get me wrong. I go to jazz concerts like the biggest jazz fan in world. The drag is that I don't play jazz for a living.
I have to go into the studio to make my second album knowing I'm making an album. When I first started making songs I didn't have an album in mind, that's why a lot of them I like - I'm talking about how I haven't got a deal, how I'm living, you can never really top the first time, but we'll see how it goes.
Comedy is a funny thing, and it's really not like any other art form in that it's very specialized and varied in it's content, but generic in it's title. You would never go to a club just to see "Live music," you would go to a jazz club to see jazz, a blues club to see blues, etc. But when you go to see "standup comedy," if you don't know the performers material, you really don't have any idea what you're gonna get.
A really humbling experience that we've had was touring on Post-Nothing, was having people come up to us and tell that story about Post-Nothing. Especially as the tour went on, people saying, "I listened to your album when it first came out and I listened to it every day for the summer of 2009. That was my album for that summer; that was my album for this time in my life." When somebody tells you that, it's a pretty amazing feeling, and very humbling.
I find myself using music metaphors all the time, but this is too perfect, I feel like. Digital downloading is like photographs online. It's great, they're available, you can see lots of different work, but it's a limited experience of the form. A book is like an album. You don't have to have a million dollars to be able to buy it, you have to save some money, you have to buy your album, then you take it home, and you put it on your turntable.
Basically we learned not ever to do a show like that [ Gigi Does It] again. That took me to a limit that I didn't know I had. First off, I show-ran the show and was the head writer. I had never done anything like that before. It was an immense responsibility.
I love jazz. So to me, there are two main types of jazz. There's dancing jazz, and then there's listening jazz. Listening jazz is like Thelonius Monk or John Coltrane, where it's a listening experience. So that's what I like; I like to make stuff that you listen to. It's not really meant to get you up; it's meant to get your mind focused. That's why you sit and listen to jazz. You dance to big band or whatever, but for the most part, you sit and listen to jazz. I think it comes from that aesthetic, trying to take that jazz listening experience and put it on hip-hop.
I read the reviews sometimes, but I don't let it really affect the next album because, for me, when I approach an album, it's usually coming to me pretty naturally. It's not like I set out, like, "Okay, I'm going to write an album this month." It's more like I'm just always writing songs and eventually I start to realize that a group of songs sort of fits together, and I go from there in putting together the album and themes and artwork and things like that.
You make your first album, you make some money, and you feel like you still have to show face, like 'I still go to the projects.' I'm like, why? Your job is to inspire people from your neighborhood to get out. You grew up there. What makes you think it's so cool?
I'm a hip-hop guy, and the first time I heard Eminem was in '96. He was on a record with Shabban Siddiq. I was like, 'Who is this guy? He's dope!' First album came out: awesome. Second album came out: awesome. Third album, I was like, 'Eh.' He started to get really successful. He wasn't 'mine' anymore.
When I went to record my first album, which should have been a punk album, there was a synthesiser in the control room. I'd never seen one before but they let me have a go on it and I loved it to bits.
Im a hip-hop guy, and the first time I heard Eminem was in 96. He was on a record with Shabban Siddiq. I was like, Who is this guy? Hes dope! First album came out: awesome. Second album came out: awesome. Third album, I was like, Eh. He started to get really successful. He wasnt mine anymore.
To me, 'Underground Luxury' is kinda like a contrasting title, and the reason for that is because on this album I plan on introducing to people and reintroducing to people the side of me that they didn't see on the first album.
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