Words matter. These are the best Frank Dukes Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
You can’t just plug your guitar in your computer and make it sound like an old record.
I’m not one for the limelight I suppose.
Nirvana, Weezer and Smashing Pumpkins, all those bands, at their core, are just really incredible pop music and I think a lot of that stuff has deeply affected the way I approach music.
Broken Clocks’ is actually a song I produced for my boy River Tiber featuring my boy Daniel Caesar.
When I go in the studio with Post, I have a really good idea of what he’s going to gravitate to, what we can work with.
I totally embrace the different transformations we’ve seen in hip-hop throughout the years.
I was into skateboarding, so through skating I kind of got into hip hop by discovering it through skate videos.
I look at the big picture and try not to create with ego.
I wanted to be a great producer so I studied great hip-hop producers, but also stuff beyond that: Phil Spector, David Axelrod, Gamble and Huff. They’re equally as influential to me as Dilla, Premier, and Pete Rock.
I love music with real instruments. I’m not one of those guys that’s a purist about analog vs. digital, but I love the analog approach. Sonically, I connect to that.
I come from the school of hip-hop where you just buy records and sample records all the time. Doing that is tough sometimes, because if you get a placement on a major record, your record could get shelved because of clearance issues.
I’m definitely interested by a lot of things outside of music – technology, film, quantum physics – and I’m realizing that I can put my creativity into anything I kind of choose to.
You never know what can happen if you get sampled by the biggest artist in the world.
My approach to making music has always been making ideas and developing them. Sometimes I develop them all the way by myself. The other part of development is I will work with my friends who are just some of the best producers in the world, give them an idea.
I love Nirvana, Weezer and a lot of pop punk stuff – Blink-182, I loved.
I love the process of collaboration… to me it just makes sense.
I’m just at home all the time wearing jogging pants.
I don’t really generate material specifically for the Kingsway Music Library. It’s just a product of the way I work.
When you’re producing, you’re really just making a series of decisions.
The thread that ties together everything I love is honesty in the intention.
In a band everyone plays their part, and I look at production the same way.
I make so many ideas, it’s impossible to finish every single one.
I know people who have sampled gospel music, and then they go to clear the sample, and it’s like, ‘You can’t take the Lord’s music and make this.’
As I change and grow, different things excite me and I just follow where that leads me.
The Kingsway Music Library was sort of a byproduct of all the creation I was doing. As creators, we kind of just create blindly sometimes and I couldn’t physically see every idea through, so I created this ecosystem where I made the ideas available to people to download, to sample and to put their own twist on it.
Once ‘0 to 100’ happened, it sort of spun this chain reaction – really the first big record that I was a part of. It was a big, life-changing thing for me.
Internet has created the ability to connect people instantly.
I can see that everybody has their own challenges that they are dealing with. But what’s so beautiful about music is that it brings people together, levels the playing field and opens people up.
I make popular music but I’m not necessarily a pop produce.
Whether it’s a huge hit or sold five copies, as long artistically and creatively I can stand by what I did, then I’ll feel successful.
