Know that I'm chosen, one of the few/Staying on top - at least, one up on you
I honestly never sat down and said "OK, here's my style," because my whole thing was knowing everyone's style. Everything I've ever written has bits and pieces of everything I've ever heard. Any rapper that tells you different is a liar.
You can't write a book if you've never read a book. And if you've read five books and you try to write a book, your book will mainly encompass the themes and the context of the five books you've read. Now, the more books you read, the more you can bring to a book when you decide to write one. So the more rap I learned, the more I was able to bring to rap when I decided to rap. But this was all subconscious.
I sat down with my long time business partner and Rap-A-Lot CEO James Prince to review the music that we had and quickly came up with an outstanding track list.
My parents are from a whole different culture. My parents are from small-town Louisiana. It's like, if it walk like a duck, talk like a duck, then it's a duck. And if you ain't quacking, you ain't no duck.
It would be kind of ill to see Rachel McAdams win an Oscar [for Spotlight] - I don't think people give her credit for her range, she started in a kind of character with younger demographic-aged films and really made a push to be taken more seriously and got a lot of opportunities and knocked it out the park. But I feel like Jennifer Jason Leigh deserves one, maybe not just for Hateful Eight but for [Anomalisa] and everything. Like, I tried to watch Adaption again, that's rough!
Every time I see myself in print or on TV, I feel like a little white girl. I feel fat.
Well, the first thing I do is I try to listen to whatever rapping is already on the track. I listen for cadence and melody to see how the track's already been written, and to make sure that whatever flow or flows I decide to run with, or patterns or melodies that I decide to put into the song, that they're not already in there. Then I try to see if there's a different part of the subject matter that I can talk about.
I'm very surprised at Carol didn't get a best picture. Todd Haynes is an Academy darling, his period pieces are nothing short of brilliant, and they hold up. And I definitely feel like Carol speaks to, even though it's set in the past, it speaks to themes we're dealing with in life right now. It's really really shocking that it didn't get it.
Once I get in my mind that it's going to go "da da da dadada da da," then it's kind of like filling in the blanks.
I don't want to call anyone an outright winner without having seen everything.
I don't make my music for just me or a few people. Hopefully everybody that makes music wants to be embraced by the people they tryna make it for, you know what I'm saying. It's just a matter of time before everybody gets the message that I'm tryna send out.
I think Straight Outta Compton is one of the greatest biopics, but I am biased on that one, obviously. There are some things the Academy gets wrong and it's important to call them on it. But in other instances, there are simply just better actors. They're doing a better job than they've done, but there's still room for improvement.
I thought The Big Short deserved a nomination because Adam MacKay is one of the best filmmakers. A lot of what he does deals in comedy and he co-produces with Will Farrell, people don't really give it the credit that it deserves. I think that they actually do great screenwriting and they make great films, very entertaining.
I take the typical words, or I pick a two-word, three-word pattern. One of the things I'm known for is I was one of the first rappers to end their bars rhyming multisyllabically.
Kate Winslet [for Steve Jobs movie, 2015] is the darling. If you wanna be the king you gotta kill the king. I think Charlotte [Rampling] is the dark horse on this one. No one does classic beauty better than her.
Ennio Morricone is royalty. He doesn't really do this a lot and Quentin brought him back [in Hateful Eight]. Quentin [Tarantino] basically went back and made his The Good, The Bad and The Ugly-kind of film, the ultimate epic spaghetti western, and then you've got mister spaghetti western himself scoring your movie. It's gonna be hard to not vote for him in a landslide. Probably the easiest win of the night.
Just someone trying to shoot in 70mm deserves the nomination, and he[Quentin Tarantino] is shooting interiors, like tight interior shots, for that matter. Obviously [Quentin] is the director and demanding the shots, but all credit for the beauty of that film [Hateful Eight] goes to the director of photography.
Sylvester wins, obviously [best actor in a supporting role in 2016]. That's the whole point of this. We're all getting dressed up to go to the Oscars to hear Sylvester Stallone, let no one get this twisted. The academy can't pay for a better moment than this: this is the Oscar's original darling.
I'm going with Charlotte Rampling. In 45 Years [movie], you start out feeling so bad for her, and then it kind of shifts. I don't know how long you have to act to be able to say everything when you say nothing. The acting feels so real. It's not a fluke that a movie that probably no one's heard of, an actress performance comes out of it.
It had no affect on me whatsoever. Um... I consider Jay a very good friend of mine. I also consider Dame and Biggs very good friends of mine. With me not being a Roc-A-Fella artist, with me just being a friend of both and not being tied to them in the Roc-A-Fella situation, I was still able to maintain personal relationships with both of em.
Brie Larson had a great run, don't get me wrong, she's had amazing films, but this movie itself, the entire concept of it as her as a mother and coming back and trying to assimilate herself in the child's life - Room is a beautiful movie.
The director Denis [Villeneuve] is actually an actor (he's from Sons of Anarchy and he's a great character actor) and he's also a screenwriter (he wrote What Lies Beneath). It blows my mind to see when people from one sector move to another and excel. I think Sicario was one of the best directed and written films. It did get [a nomination for best] cinematography, though.
[Best original song nomination in 2016] should be Wiz Khalifa for "See You Again," but this is an amazing song and it's easily the biggest song out of any of the songs nominated. It was a huge hit. And really, I'm just happy for Weeknd as a person.
The idea of watching an entire film basically from one person's perspective - and not even really from their perspective, but [it's] probably the most intimately shot film that's in any of these categories. If you're not familiar with Son of Saul, basically it's a film about a Jewish guy who's in concentration camp, but he helps dispose of the bodies after they leave the gas chamber. So, you watch the entire movie looking at Saul's face and looking at his interactions with people.
