Hip-hop to me right now is really easy listening. It's very easy listening, like there's nothing abrasive about it. There's no album that I put in my car that makes me roll down the windows - all the windows - and ride past the club line three times before I get out the car.
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.
I bought Windows 2.0, Windows 3.0, Windows 3.1415926, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows RSVP, The Best of Windows, Windows Strikes Back, Windows Does Dallas, and Windows Let's All Buy Bill Gates a House the Size of Vermont.
I remember those moments in my life when the tape came out on that Tuesday, and I went to Sam Goody to cop it. And sitting and listening to it. In awe of the music I was listening to, but also imagining this music at the hip-hop clubs and with the homies in the car.
I think I feel a car like anybody else can, but maybe what makes me different is that I race so much that I have experience racing with a lot of different crew chiefs. I'm really easy to get along with and me not knowing anything about a race car, I know to just let them do their job.
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 feel like my place is to connect hip-hop... with the youth, the older, the middle. Just everybody that's listening to me. My place in hip-hop is really to just connect and show positivity. Put my vibe out there.
Rarely a producer gives me music and I write to it. I think that's too easy. Most of the time for me, it's on an elevator or in my car listening to absolutely nothing. I'll just be driving and then the lyrics birth.
I was once fortunate enough to live close to a strawberry farm, and I'd always get excited to drive past it on my way to and from work. Every day, I'd roll down the windows and take in that sweet, almost candy-like smell that was so strong it filled the whole area, including my car.
You start learning English in fifth grade. I was 12. But even before then I was listening to American music. My neighbor was a really big hip-hop fan, so he taught me everything around hip-hop.
When I finish an album and I find myself listening to it in the car, because it makes me feel a certain way, that's the time to try to let other people know about it.
When there's not ten feet of snow on the ground I ride my bike down the streets of New York, and I literally hear two things out of car windows as cabs pass by me: They either yell, "Hey, dummy," or "Hey, Mayhem."
When there's not ten feet of snow on the ground, I ride my bike down the streets of New York, and I literally hear two things out of car windows as cabs pass by me: They either yell, 'Hey, dummy,' or 'Hey, Mayhem.'
I sometimes get in the car [and] jump all around hunting for a sample, and then I can get really annoying if anyone's in the car with me. But if I'm actually listening to music, I have a pretty solid attention span.
I have this dreadful image of me driving down Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, with the windows rolled down, and our song comes on... and I'm sitting there listening to it and some guy pulls up next to me and thinks, 'Hey, it's that guy from the Goo Goo Dolls... he's listening to his own music. What a jerk!'
I'd like an old car just so I can control the windows with a handle. I hate electronic windows.
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.