Top 66 Mike Posner Quotes

Tons of people inspire my music, and now when I do an interview, I’m scared to say who they are.

From what I understand about Shakespeare – which isn’t a lot – there was no copyright law when he was writing. He sampled at will, and it wasn’t seen as a bad thing.

I realized that a lot of people in my family had sacrificed for me to have the opportunity to go to a place like Duke. I owed it to them to finish. I graduated with a 3.6.

It’s always hard for an artist from the U.K. to break into the United States. It’s especially harder for a rapper because hip-hop is such an American art form.

When you know it’s a game, you can have more fun playing it. When things seem serious, you tend to take less risk and have less fun.

If my career was a basketball season, I’m in the pre-season still. I’m not blowing everybody out by 40 – there’s so much work to be done, and there’s no time to really sit and look back and be proud of what I’ve done yet, because it’s the pre-season still.

It’s easier to make art for a society at a certain point in time with an understanding of what’s going on.

It’s important to me that my songs actually make sense. So often, I turn on the radio, and I have no idea what the people are singing about. It may sound good, but when you listen, they’re just saying words that rhyme. It’s another song about nothing.

When I was a kid, my parents were always like, ‘Money doesn’t buy happiness.’ I thought, ‘You just didn’t make enough money.’ I had to go find it out for myself.

My songs are all personal.

I really look up to Louis C.K. I think he’s great. And obviously he’s very popular, more popular than me. Years ago, I was thinking, naively, it would be great to be that popular. And then I thought about it and then I realized that, with his money and his level of notoriety, he has all of the same emotions that I do.

I thought, ‘Oh that’s what happens. You put a song out and everyone likes it.’ Well, then a funny thing happened: I started putting more songs out, and none of them did the same thing.

I grew up making music in my mum’s basement, and I used to tell her I was going down there to work, and she’d say, ‘That’s not work. Go get a real job!’ It took me signing a record deal to change her opinion!

I made a CD in my dorm room and put it on the Internet, and my friends blew it up. Within a few months, I was doing shows across the country without a record deal, without a single, without anything.

I came to realize that if I was going to succeed in the music industry, I was going to have to learn how to perform my songs myself.

Honestly, I don’t go to clubs very often.

I have my dream job. I get paid to make music.

All my music is autobiographical, and that’s the reason why people like my music. They know when I’m saying something on a song, I mean it. It comes from a real place and captures the realness in my life.

When you’re a writer, your song has to resonate with the person you’re writing for in order for them to want to sing it. But if you’re an artist, you can sing whatever you want.

It took me a long time to stumble upon a sound, and I figured out I wanted to kinda sing rapper’s lyrics.

I try to listen to as much different music as possible – I’ve always got music blasting in my ears!

I didn’t really experience any hardship like people tend to think of when they hear the words ‘Detroit, Michigan.’ I think Big Sean is a much better ambassador for the city.

When I went to college, I made my first mixtape, and Sean gave me three verses for it. That was a big reason anyone ever listened to my music. I definitely wouldn’t be talking to you now if it wasn’t for Big Sean.

I grew up a hip-hop kid doing mix-tapes.

Avicii’s been a supporter of my music for years, and we’ve been writing songs together for a long time.

A lot of my friends who I wrote or produced songs for came back and helped me make ‘Pages.’ It’s better than I ever could have imagined.

I did rap when I was a teenager – started rapping when I was nine, and started singing when I was 20. I kinda sing like a rapper would sing.

Just be yourself and be upfront about your expectations and desires. Don’t be ambiguous and play hard to get. It doesn’t work. You’ll end up in the friend zone.

It’s like, we all grow up thinking it would be so nice to have hundreds of people falling over themselves trying to grab us, telling us we’re great, that they love us.

How can a song all about struggling with the afterglow of fame thrust someone into fame? How can a lyric like, ‘I’m just a singer who already blew his shot,’ give a singer another shot? I don’t know… but it’s funny.

It’s just about being honest. I listen to a lot of stuff that’s out there, some of which I wrote, and I’m like, ‘Where is that? Where’s the honesty?’ So that’s what I want to get to in my music now.

I co-produced ‘Boyfriend’ by Justin Bieber and worked on Labrinth’s album, so I’ve been keeping busy.

I think – for a period of time, I did think art was there to serve me, but it took me a minute to reset.

I cared too much about people liking me because I didn’t like myself enough.

I try to tell the truth in my lyrics; write good melodies and make hard beats. So, basically, I just combine hip-hop with melody. That’s how I classify myself.

I wanted to break into producing, so I would peddle my tracks and beats to labels. I always heard the same thing: They liked the music, but it didn’t fit any of the artists on their roster.

I’ve only had success when I’m not trying to. It’s that weird thing where if you’re trying to impress a girl, you’re not going to impress her. But if you aren’t trying to impress a girl, you’ll probably impress her because you’re not trying.

I didn’t give myself enough love, so I was searching for it in other places, and it was a never ending struggle.

If a song about blowing your shot becomes popular, that’s really funny.

If they want to party and do all the things I say brought me sadness in my song, with my song as the soundtrack… so be it.

I’m a big fan of country music.

If anyone has listened to my stuff over the years, they know I tend not to do the same thing twice.

My favorite television show is ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.’

It’s not the job of the art to accommodate me and make me more money, make me more famous and get me more girls.

I remember being 24 in Los Angeles. And up until that moment, when my mom would call my cell phone and it would ring, I would be flushed with some sort of excitement that we all have – a little dopamine rush, when my phone rings – and I’d look down, and it would say, ‘Mom.’ It used to feel like a job to pick that up.

Some of my early musical memories are attached to grunge.

I always wanted everyone to love me, probably because I didn’t love myself enough. But now I realize that when you’re an artist, you’re making the music that’s in your head and in your heart, and not for any other reason.

I’ll read on Twitter, ‘Do you still do music?’ Music is all I do, all day.

I take a lot of pride in my songs.

I feel super, super grateful that I get to make music.

I stay up too late pretty much every night working on music.

My favorite Duke player ever is Steve Wojciechowski. He called me one day congratulating me on my success thus far, and I was like,’I appreciate it, but man, please don’t congratulate me. I know when you guys start the season, you’re not just trying to be 10-10 or ACC champions, you’re trying to win it all.’

I consider myself a lyrics guy.

When I started picking out music for myself, I was a hip-hop kid. DMX, The Roots, Outkast, people like that.

There was a time when being loaded and loved and popular really mattered a lot to me. I’d say that when I was less popular, I learned to be happy without those things.

I feel like my best music is still ahead of me, and I can’t wait for everyone to hear it.

I had an initial wave of popularity that, in time, crashed, and I slowly became less popular and less successful, and I had to figure out who I was without those things.

I have a very wide spectrum of stuff that I grew up listening to.

I like regular girls.

I remember with my first album, I was so scared of messing it up, of blowing the opportunity, that I blew it.

In my short career, I tend not to repeat myself. I have no interest in redoing something. Sometimes that makes people angry, and maybe it’s not the best thing for me commercially. But it’s the best thing for me artistically, and it’s the best thing for my heart.

I believe in the ethos of the remix, like Andy Warhol making a painting of a Campbell’s soup label.

I was really lucky to grow up in an extremely diverse neighborhood.

You need to stop looking outside and look inside – and it’s such a good feeling. A feeling of love and that everything is going to be OK, and all you have to do is nothing.

My focus is to try to appreciate the present moment more and more and more.

Nothing means more to me than making the best music and me getting better as a writer and producer… I want you to know I work really hard. The bar is really high.