Making music is a lifestyle; go to the studio and sit in front of your computer, drum machine or guitar for 10 hours a day. The good stuff will come.
I mean, my wife is always like - I don't write lyrics. So I couldn't, like, really technically write a song for anyone. I could write a very nice instrumental. So she always sort of gives me a hard time because it's just such a ridiculously impossible standard to live up to, that your step-dad wrote that song for your mom.
I didn't start making music in order to be famous.
I remember that the bass was turned up slightly more on the mix from last week, and I thought that was good - or whatever. Like, there were some little things in there that he said that he came to, like, really enjoy my opinion or at least, like, my little comments on the songs. So I was kind of destined to probably be a studio rat.
Then, you know, the other more-traditional role of the producer in, like, the kind of Quincy Jones sense is kind of part arranger. So you're coming up with, like, these - you hear these songs that are quite bare-bones, and you dream up what's the band doing? What's the rhythm section doing? What's the guitars, strings, pianos - that sort of thing. It's almost like a little toolbox.
I guess the best thing about having a successful record like this is, like, I know I'm at least good for another five years, like, before everyone starts to like - all the haters start to come out again. And that's really what it is.
I had a somewhat frenetic childhood because my mum and dad split up when I was five, and then my mum remarried.
My mother was pretty strict. I hated it, but maybe it made me a bit more sensible.
I never studied jazz technically; I just know and love the music.
I don't have a crazy rider clause saying I have to stay at fancy hotels. I don't have a problem with staying at a Marriott. But I will admit that I've gotten just basic, regular service there.
You have to put these hooks in it, you know? You've got to make sure you got all that ear candy in it to get it through the gate.
D'Angelo could sing the phonebook and it would sound good.
I didn't really get that good at cutting because I didn't have those three years of gestating and nurturing my skills in the bedroom. I was kind of, like, out and playing in clubs after three of four months, because I was pushy with promoters. But I would just listen to the radio - Stretch Armstrong and Red Alert - and then I would go hang out with Mayhem, who did the WNYU hip-hop show.
The cologne you pick should make you feel good when you go out with it. I think confidence comes across more than any other of our attributes.
My grandmother always used to wear this English perfume called Tuberose and then she died and then I dated this girl who wore the same thing. Every time I hung out with her, I could only think of my recently deceased grandmother. So sometimes a signature scent can be good and sometimes it can be bad.
I really love something about being around the recording studios - you know, like, those days in the '80s they'd be, like, in the studio 'til 4, 5, 6 in the morning working on these songs.
I think, you know, for me, whatever I need to slot into to make that music the best it can be or help the artists, or whoever I'm working with, achieve whatever vision they have in their head for a song.
And then, also, when you're doing something that doesn't sound like anything else on the radio at the time, you almost need to, like, ironclad it to make sure it gets through, you know?
I think that that spirit, or at least the raucousness of maybe that, is in there. And then yeah, like, along the way, you fine tune it 'cause you're thinking, like, OK, we need to now turn this into a song.
I think that where it came from and the initial birth of it - it did come out of a jam at Bruno's studio, you know? He was playing drums. And Jeff Bhasker, who co-produced the record with us, is on synths, and I was playing bass.
Stevie Wonder doing 'We Can Work It Out' by the Beatles is one of my favorite records of all time.
DJing is an art that I have the utmost respect for, and I've been practising it since I was 17 years old. Doing Tom Cruise wedding-type things becomes the focal point of every interview, and you realize that you have to cut it out if you don't want to be answering questions about that.
Being a die-hard Knicks fan, I remember hunting down these orange-and-blue Nikes that they only released in England. And I used to hunt for sneakers when I DJ'd in Japan. But then Nike flooded the market with a head-spinning array of color combinations and it just didn't seem cool anymore.
I used to be a serious sneaker addict, but I've moved on a little bit from those days.
It's like every time you have one of these, you're sort of - your lease is renewed another five years. And that's kind of great for me 'cause that's all I really want to be doing still at this point, like just making records and getting to work with, like, artists that I think are exciting.
