I’m a competitor and a very proud man. If a guy beats me once, he’ll have to do it again to make me believe him.
I was about 18 when I started making music, making beats. My mindset was totally different.
I knew that as a DJ from 1970 on up that I would eventually come with this sound. I brought out all these other break beats that you hear so much on a lot of these records.
If you put four different people on a podium conducting the same downbeat, you get four different sounds. It’s a little mysterious and fascinating. There’s so much you can do with motions and body movements besides giving accurate beats.
Ever since I was a little kid, I got bored, so I learned to sing, and I started singing lessons. And then anytime I was bored, I would start writing and start messing around on my computer, making beats. Then I got bored and started making YouTube videos; that changed my life in a big way.
It’s not easy to sound like Dilla, but you can make beats like Dilla with your computer, so that’s why everybody sounds like Dilla.
I think writing and singing go together, but I treat them as two separate careers because I write for others. If I’m writing for myself, I prefer to be with the producer. And then we can vibe out and throw ideas back and forth, and I’ll basically let the producer play me a bunch of beats until I vibe with one.
I love music, and can dance on the desi beats. Punjabi music is my favourite. I listen to artists like Honey Singh. I love his music. I also love watching Bollywood films.
Beats are really inspiring. They always make me want to write something over them.
I have to have my Beats Studio3 noise-canceling headphones with me on long flights.
If you really look at the sport, when the No. 1 ranked fighter beats the No. 2 ranked fighter, the only thing that’s up next for him is a title fight.
I really only make my own beats when I feel like I can’t wait on somebody, or it’s taking too long to get a nice beat to rap on.
I use music in the operating room to help create a healing environment for patients and staff. There is a reason that certain heart rates are healthy and certain beats of music heal and relax us.
I’ve always gravitated towards the beats, obviously. And when I was growing up, I always loved funk music or even – dare I say it – disco.
Beats succeeded because, as music lovers, we knew oscilloscopes don’t buy headphones – people do.
When I actually first moved to Atlanta, I was cutting hair. I was making beats and making music out in the Bay Area. But I came here to make – you know, I had to get my barber license, so I was cutting hair.
I love good beats and good lyrics. I’m pretty open.
I just pretty much go to class, do my work, and go to my dorm and make beats. Or I pull up to a session. That’s pretty much my day-to-day.
Where other people live in an artificial world, I feel I live in the real world. And nothing beats reality.
You just realize that at the beginning of ‘Scooby’ you’re just going to start at level ten and stay at ten the entire time. It’s hard. It physically beats you up. It’s definitely one of the hardest movies you can do.
With The Fugees initially, and even with ‘Miseducation’, it was very hip-hop – always a singing over beats. I don’t think people have really heard me sing out. So if I do record again, perhaps it will have an expanded context. Where people can hear a bit more.
A lot of people just send me beats, and I pick the ones I like. See, once I said I was doing my album – because I know everybody and they mama – everybody just got in touch with me.
I struggled with working with producers because no one openly wanted to give me a chance to rap on their beats. That’s just honest talk. No one really wanted to take that risk.
When I first decided I wanted to make beats and write songs and stuff like that, it wasn’t like I sat down and the first thing I wrote was even halfway legit. It took a while to find my way through it.
I was like 13, 14 years old. I had a Rock Band mic, and I used to record music and put it on YouTube and DatPiff. Then I started getting to producing my own music because I didn’t want to keep rapping on beats I was getting on SoundClick.
Everything I make as a producer, I visualize it as a DJ first. And all those beats, I test them as a DJ.
Winning isn’t everything, but it sure beats anything that comes in second.
People such as Hunter S. Thompson and the Beats were a huge influence on me, not just in what they were saying, but how they said it.
None of my songs sound the same. None of them. I take R&B beats and put it as a rap song or hip-hop beats and put them as a R&B song. A lot of people are boring. I don’t like boring music. Everybody sounds the same, like they copying.
I was already writing poetry, so I transitioned from writing poetry a cappella to writing over beats, and it was way more exciting to me that way.
Mentality beats quality.
