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When I first started making music, I was all about wordplay and how fast I could rap, but over the years, I've really gained an appreciation for melody. What's cool is that when you're singing, you have to be concise, and when you're rapping, you have the opportunity to be really detailed with your lyrics.
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I've always had a complicated relationship with sleep. Even as a little kid, I never wanted to go to bed - it always seemed unfair in some way.
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There's only so many variations on the basics of human relationships. To me, it's all about the detail and how you tell the story. How you say, 'I love you.'
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I'm a big advocate of revisions, of living with something for a month and then realizing what needs changing, what was lazy, what could be better.
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I think, initially, working on your own is really great because it allows you to just be really free and not worry about how things are perceived or if people are going to think you're an idiot. And once that becomes ingrained, at least for me, I think I'll feel really comfortable to work with other people and still feel that same freedom.
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My songs are a mix of my own weird raised-by-wolves perspective and civilization.
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'Life as a Dog' is when I really started to feel comfortable, like I had the due north on my compass.
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I liked that music was a window into a world with a lot of unpredictability and chaos; it was almost diametrically opposed to my very regimented day-to-day living.
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I'm intrigued by people who are super adept at manipulating their own image. We all do it to a certain extent.
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When I was growing up, I wasn't in bands, and had really no intention of ever doing music. I went out to California for college, and kind of on a whim started making music really as a joke, and over the course of the next five years started playing a lot of shows, and music became this really integral part of my identity.
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What I've discovered and try to integrate into my show is when you're up there, and you are loud and more visible, you're setting a tone for how people can behave and how they can feel comfortable behaving.
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I'm having this disbelief and dissatisfaction with an establishment that feels like it's moving backward, and I think there's a similar feeling with everyone of my age and in the world of music and artistic stuff. Art is an important way those feelings get expressed and help people process their feelings and opinions.
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Remixes are so much fun. For me, it's like this great release of energy. I like producing stuff for myself, but I also enjoy making music that wouldn't really suit my own vibe.
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A lot of people don't even listen to albums start to finish, but I do - for sure.
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My default is e-40 because there's no one else in the world who raps like him. I've always loved e-40.
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Most of the people at my headline shows are in their 20s, but it varies a ton: like, I've had a six-year-old hug my leg after the show and a 60-year-old shake my hand. It's cool to see people connecting with the music across different generations.
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The one thing that I've always kind of had, ever since I was a kid, was that I lack a certain degree of self-consciousness, which is alternately good and bad.
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I've always had a duck personality. Calm above water, feet going crazy below.
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I think the key for any kind of artist - and this transcends music - is a certain degree of authenticity and sincerity.
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My dad played guitar, and he taught me enough to play some Beatles' songs. But primarily, I was a bookworm. I loved reading and still do. My whole family does. It was part of the family culture. Accomplished literacy was a value.
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I'm letting inspiration move me, in whatever direction it may, without concern if this sounds too rap or too indie, or there's too many words in it.
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My sound is, at its core, a mix of things. Definitely an imperfect mix, but one that incorporates elements of the music I love - a bit of indie rock, super rhythmic rapping, and lots of synths.
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Hip-hop is rich in musical allusion. It takes something that already existed, respects it, and reuses it.
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My dad was a serious alcoholic, and ultimately, that's why he died. When you're a child of someone who struggled with things like that, you look for the common thread. Is there a pattern? Is there an inheritance of pathology in some way? That haunts me.