Top 25 Adrian Younge Quotes

I love how music can create an audiovisual experience. To me, some of the best music is the music that does that.

When Curtis Mayfield made ‘Super Fly,’ he used the lyric to make a statement.

I love sampling, and RZA loves sampling, too.

I like golden-era hip-hop because they were recording on a 2-inch tape. There was dirty, raw sampling. It’s nasty. It has a vibe to it.

‘Luke Cage’ came out in 1972 at the height of the blaxploitation era. It was a literary response to this notion of blaxploitation movies. It was the first time in American culture that Hollywood was embracing black movies.

I love the song ‘Picasso Baby,’ and I think the performance art piece was brilliant. I love that fact that Jay Z is continuing to raise the bar on hip hop.

A lot of people record on a laptop and use plug-ins, which might be OK for the kind of music that they’re doing. But for the kind of music that I’m doing, that just doesn’t work. I can’t cut corners; everything has to be organic.

I tell people, ‘I don’t make music, I make worlds.’

I basically wake up at five in the morning and grab coffee and just get to the studio. And I have a list of things I need to get done every day. Sometimes it’s just mixing, sometimes it’s actually writing, sometimes it’s writing, recording, and mixing. It all depends on what is necessary that day.

I’m a huge Stereolab fan.

People like RZA and DJ Premier are really on the balcony to scope my musical theories. They also help me focus on making sure I make money, making sure I get the notoriety I should, just regular stuff that friends do when you’re in the business. And to call them friends is amazing.

My studio is fully analog. There’s nothing modern. There’s not even a computer in my studio.

Sometimes, a concept is needed to spark myself and the vocalist; sometimes a concept isn’t necessary for that spark. It all depends on the moment, because I don’t want to be that dude that every album has to be this story or that story.

As me being somebody that makes arguably nostalgic music, I cannot stand when somebody tries to make old music just to sound old.

I’m the black dude that loves old black culture. I also love old white culture. I just love history, but I’m the guy that wants to bring things back and push them forward.

It’s the ownership of what’s off that’s the beauty in art. Its not about being exactly perfect.

People don’t realize how much it means to your music to record on tape, whether it be for new music or old music. People don’t realize how much or how imperative it is to use actual hardware when making drums because those are actual percussion samplers. They’re hardware instruments that are made to have the drum hit.

I was really raised on hip-hop, and hip-hop introduced me basically to all the music I listen to now.

Having Ghost and Raekwon together on multiple tracks is almost like cheating because they fit so well together. Their chemistry is undeniable, and they clearly make each other better.

I don’t like to focus on just hip-hop because with hip-hop, I can only do so much; with a vocalist, I can only do so much, but the limitations are varying.

We love high-end art, but when you’re looking at high-end art in music, a lot of the time, it’s appreciated academically, but you can’t feel it as much.

The ramifications that you set for yourself can inspire you to do things that you would have never thought of because, once you’re trapped, your job is to persevere.

I can’t do too much musical movement with a lot of MC’s, because they don’t know how to follow me. But with Souls of Mischief, I could go anywhere because they are musicians – they rap as musicians, and they play instruments and produce, so they get that.

I started buying ill, obscure records, and then I saw Portishead and Air live, and my mouth was on the ground.

I’d never record digitally. It’s not because its’ a horrible way to record, it’s just not the best way to record my music, because my music is rawer, darker and a little more nostalgic.