I remember a couple of instrumental albums, just don’t ask the names.
One could work on a lot of albums such as ‘Thiruvasagam in Symphony,’ but with issues such as illegal downloading from the Internet and piracy, it is difficult.
When I was growing up, I was really into comedy. I listened to a lot of comedy albums. I loved Richard Pryor, but the comic that had the most impact on me was always my brother Chris, who was in the next room. It was tangible. If Chris could make it, I could try.
I have long begged off the question of my albums reflecting where I am ‘at’ personally. There is more inaccuracy in that approach than accuracy.
The only people playing the roles of classic rock stars are hip-hop artists, now. Kanye’s stage persona, and the way he approaches making albums, and the way he wants to be better than everyone else? That’s reminiscent of Freddie Mercury. That’s reminiscent of the Beatles.
My first four albums covered the usual youth problems – looking for love in all the wrong places – while the next five are basically about being in your 30s.
All the albums that I grew up listening to were produced by one person.
Producing albums is 100 per cent where I would love to be, later in my career.
When I’m done with my last album, I want to make a movie with Tim Burton telling the story of all of the albums connected. That’s my biggest dream.
Although cover notes for classical music albums tend to say that the trill of flutes suggests mountain streams and so on, I don’t think anybody listens to music with the expectation that they’re going to be presented with a sort of landscape painting.
I have a lot of albums yet to do.
Steven, my friend who came out to me my senior year, was a huge Madonna fan. So I may know all the words to ‘Bedtime Stories,’ ‘Erotica,’ and a few more of her albums – and we may have watched ‘Truth or Dare’ a thousand times.
All of our other albums were consecutive year after year: ‘No More Mr. Nice Guy,’ ‘Step in the Arena,’ ‘Daily Operation,’ ‘Hard to Earn.’ After ‘Hard to Earn,’ a four-year gap is a lot of not having Gang Starr music, as far as an album is concerned.
When I was growing up, I had more comedy albums than musical ones. George Carlin, Cheech and Chong, Steve Martin, Richard Pryor – those were my main men.
We had a huge audience, we sold truckloads of albums. If we do something that’s cool, people will listen to it. If we don’t, we would be selling people short.
‘Uprising’ was one of the first three or four albums I ever bought in 1980 when I was 13, and that had a strong impact on me.
For a rock band, I didn’t see the point in live albums. To my mind, you’ve got to be there.
I remember the first time I received a cassette tape of a band called The Clash. I became an instant fan of the Clash and then bought their albums after that and went to their concerts and gave them my money… but I first got it for free.
I see my albums as working diaries, as living scrapbooks of me and my life.
For a band to make it to four albums is no small feat in itself.
I want to be an all round entertainer, I want to act, make films, make albums, do whatever I can.
If one artist sells five million albums, the tendency is for other artists to say, ‘Maybe I should do a little of that, too.’ That can be tough to resist.
There are autobiographical elements to the albums, and when I write, I always reference my own life as well as other things, so I’m just like any novelist or any fiction writer who tells stories.
I think it all started with Nina Simone. When I was maybe seven or eight, I used to listen to one of her albums every night before I went to sleep. For me, her voice was everything.
The early ’90s was the best time for hip-hop. The Cube’s, the Snoop’s, the Dre’s – that was a golden time with great music, great albums, great groups, everything.
No matter what I’m doing for myself or someone else, I’m constantly writing and working on other people’s albums.
Our live show is a definite experience, since it’s an extension of my albums.
Any album that you pick up of mine, you know it’s an Akon album. The guests are very limited, and you get to really feel the experience. You get the Akon experience when you get the albums. I always want to make sure that stays the way it is. I don’t want to flood the album to where you lose focus on why you bought it.
But I always held my music up and protected it from compromise. So I just do it for my friends. I’ve written hundreds of songs, and I’m sure I have a few albums worth of songs.
Albums are a journey, and I even find that as a DJ, with less than two hours, I can barely communicate anything. So I like to play long sets.
With albums like ‘Rodeo,’ ‘Days Before Rodeo’ and ‘Owl Pharaoh,’ I was really tuned into wanting to get people to understand my conscious and who I was mentally and who I am mentally.
When I made ‘1983,’ there were a bunch of tracks that were in the early drafts that didn’t make it because they just sounded like tracks for rappers, and that’s not really the sound I look for when I produce my own albums.
But then I hit my 20s and only made two albums, and now I live in a ski resort as a ski bum basically.
I don’t like any of the Geto Boys albums at all. Not one. There isn’t a Geto Boys album that I like. I didn’t learn anything from it, and it was a bad time in life for me too. With the label, with life, whatever… it’s a point in my life where I was the most miserable.
I listened to the radio, so I was influenced by everyone from Michael Jackson to Milli Vanilli. But thankfully my dad had a collection of Cat Stevens albums while my mom was listening to jazz.
Am I the man who killed Deep Purple? I don’t think so. I think every band from that era, even if you look at Led Zeppelin, if you look at their first four albums, they’re extremely different from one another, and I’ve never made the same album twice.
I’ve never been asked to do a collaboration. I guess I just don’t give off that come-and-get-me vibe. I wouldn’t be adverse to doing one with Coldplay or U2 – anyone who sells 50 million albums.
It’s pretty cool that people will pay for something even though they don’t have to. It’s totally different now to back in the day. Now you’re paying for a record because you believe in the band. In the future that will be the only time people will pay for albums, because there’s some kind of connection.
One of the first albums I can remember hearing was a Supertramp best of, with mostly ‘Breakfast in America’ songs on it. It’s kind of the same thing as the Flaming Lips, where there are these really melancholy lyrics and melodies, yet it’s extremely uplifting. They’re like a nonfuturistic version of the Flaming Lips.
I like to consider myself an all-rounder, and I’m not trying to be King of the Scene or anything. I’d like to do everything, from writing film scores to producing pop albums.
Traditionally the show must go on which is a stupid thing to say, but that in a nutshell is what’s going on. We have a new record out; if we won’t tour, the new record dies. It’s reality – it’s what business is nowadays. You just need to tour to sell your albums.
