Words matter. These are the best Tricky Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I can experiment, I can be honest, and honestly, musically, I can’t be touched.
I’m straight-up with people.
Oh, I still like dresses. I’ve still got plenty of them. It’s just that I don’t put them on specially for photo-shoots anymore. It’s just part of my everyday life.
I never sold out. I never made an album to buy a house.
School is about who you know, but I think it’s a form of brainwashing. I learnt to read and write and that was enough.
Being naive I think is how you construct new music. When you start thinking too much what is it you’re doing? You’re just making an album. You’re not doing brain surgery. If you take it too seriously you start taking yourself too seriously.
I have my routine. In the evenings I watch ‘Seinfeld’ and ‘Frasier.’ That finishes about 11.30 and then I go to bed. I get up at eight o’clock every day, and I’m on the phone straight away, doing business.
I’ve always loved rock music. I’ve always loved stuff like the Specials and the Breeders and things like that. But it was hip-hop that really got me into music.
I’m not just a kid from Knowle West trying to build a future, I have some experience, I can experiment… and honestly, musically, I can’t be touched.
If I had made another ‘Maxinquaye,’ I’d have had ten times as much success. I ain’t going down that path, because that way you’re totally controlled by people around you. I don’t want to be controlled.
I was quite… feminine. Not in my actions, in my ways. If one of my uncles had trouble at school, they’d go to that person and thump him. It’s all a man thing. They got sent off to boxing when they were kids. You live in a tough area, you get off to boxing. My auntie tried to do that to me. I lasted six minutes in boxing.
People can’t work out my music, but neither can I. I just put it together. I don’t know how it happens.
I’ve learned to enjoy a very simple lifestyle.
I always thought you went out and entertained people and got nothing back in return. But in the last year, I’ve realised that what the crowd gives you is so amazing, that sometimes I just stand onstage and cry.
I never compromised myself musically.
I’ve had a bit of a crazy life. So writing lyrics in songs is easy for me.
I can’t afford to take advice.
People put you into a category and if you don’t fight it you’re stuck there for the rest of your life.
What I consider normal ain’t really normal.
Surviving in music is the same as surviving in a place like Knowle West – sometimes you need to be low-key, but sometimes you need to make your presence felt.
I’m not going to be pretentious and two-faced to get a good review. But that’s the kind of thing which gets you a rep in this business.
I lived in New Jersey in a massive house, not a 50 Cent mansion, but four bedrooms, and I had acres of land.
If I’d lived in Bristol, I’d probably be doing building site stuff, plastering. Probably not the plastering. It would have been mixing. I could always get work from friends who did construction. But I wasn’t into getting up at seven in the morning.
My music life is great. It’s in the real world, that’s where I have the problem, sometimes relating to people. I can be angry, you know, still really dark in my mind.
I can remember arguing for two days with Mark Saunders about ‘Strugglin’.’ He said: ‘This can’t work. It’s not musically correct.’ And I said: ‘If I can hear it in my brain you can’t tell me it can’t work.’
Bjork was so good to me. She’s very independent and she doesn’t suck your energy. She lets you be you. She’s a free spirit so she knows how to be with a free spirit. That’s the only sort of woman I could see myself staying with.
Because I didn’t come from money I didn’t know to manage it.
I grew up in a mixed-race family in Bristol. My cousin was this white guy who was interested in Parliament, Marc Bolan, Bowie. His friends were football thugs and while I was getting ready for bed, they’d be listening to all that music. When I was older, I’d go to a Jamaican sound system and there were no white people.
A lot of young people have not a clue what being famous entails. When you lose your anonymity you can’t walk down the street without people looking at you.
The music I should be doing is music that you haven’t heard before – whether you like it or not. I don’t want to just repeat.
I think Kylie’s underrated… Cool is knowing yourself and I think Kylie Minogue really knows who she is and doesn’t try to be anything else.
Sometimes I walk down the street and hear people whisper ‘that’s Tricky’ and I look back, and I see them looking back, then that affects everything I do – the way I walk the way I talk. It stops you being real.
I would work with someone humble like that guy Peter Andre than Madonna.
I wouldn’t work with Damon Albarn again.
She ain’t my queen. My grandmother is my queen, and my auntie, my cousin, my daughters… the Queen’s never done anything for me.
I didn’t want to be just a Top 20 artist.
I’m not very good with roughing it.
Yes, well, on stage I’m a different person, very aggressive, very tense. That’s not me because I’m humble and polite, unless someone is rude to me.
When I’m not on tour, my band have to do pantomime. I want to do big gigs to earn them money.
Success has got nothing to do with being happy. I’ve been very rich, and been unhappy, and I’ve been very poor, and been happy.
I get bored very quickly.
Someone at Hollywood Records said, ‘Are you into Alanis Morissette?’ I said ‘Yeah, she sells 26 million albums, of course. It would be perverse if she works with me, but I don’t think you can get her.’ A week later they say she’s coming down the studio.
My manager told me that a kid who was in a coma woke up after ten days when they played him one of my songs. That now means more to me than winning any award.
Fear can be very dangerous. You should never make someone too scared of you.
I’m forced away from what I would call my music. I can’t do another thing like ‘Maxinquaye.’ But if people didn’t go out and copy it, I might have done another three or four ‘Maxinquayes.’ Which is terrible.