Benjamin Hammond "Ben" Haggerty Quotes
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Do you want to live life, or do you want to escape life?
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I want to be someone who is respected and not just in terms of my music. I want to be respected in terms of the way that I treat people... Music is my creative outlet in terms of expressing what is important to me; what has importance, what has a value. And I wanna be respected for that.
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I've never been a religious person. I've been a spiritual person since I was about 15, 16, when I was first introduced to Psilocybin [mushrooms]. That really opened me up to thinking about the universe in a different way, and coming to significant realizations about my connection to something greater than me.
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For me, being transparent about every aspect of my life is what makes my music relatable and how I'm able to be an individual amongst the mass amounts of other artists.
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I think people are enticed by indie rap and every time you have a group going against the grain, they're gonna be like, 'Wow, you did it yourself in 2012, that's impressive - how did you do it? What're you doing that's different? And how can I be a part of it?'
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Michael Jordan was a cultural icon that everybody on the playground wanted to be. The Bulls dynasty was a huge part of my childhood and it was the peak of my basketball interest as a kid.
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As a white male in America, I have privilege. As a white male who happens to be an artist with a fan base, I have a platform to spread awareness about that privilege. However, songs about race and privilege are very difficult to A) write and B) dissect as a listener. They're heavy.
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I like to be as diverse as possible. I think the humorous side and the serious side are both elements of my personality. It's what makes me who I am and if I was to neglect either one of those sides and just focus on one of them, it wouldn't be the full spectrum of my personality.
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The one thing I will never do is buy a shirt because of its name, especially when it's $600 for that shirt. To me, that's ridiculous. It's just a shirt; it's not worth the money.
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Hip-hop was started as a very egocentric, testosterone, machismo-driven art form. The way that people are trying to take away that masculinity that is a such an intrinsical part of hip-hop music.
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I can write for weeks or months sometimes and edit it down to a song. I feel like it's a piece of music that will hopefully stand the test of time and hopefully capture a moment in history if I'm doing it correctly and honestly.
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I'd always thought that if I could get sober and stay sober, I would be able to have a career making music. My drug and alcohol addiction was the one thing holding me back. I had finally gotten the tools to stay sober, and it was just a matter of writing the songs.
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I wanted to get clean. I knew that my highest potential, the place that I was most spiritual, the place that I was the most rich in terms of my life, and my livelihood, and my art and my creativity, was when I was sober.
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If I was gay, I would think hip-hop hates me. Have you read the YouTube comments lately? 'Man, that's gay' gets dropped on the daily.
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It's been so long since I've really truly felt what it's like to live life without substances to help. Massive struggle that's natural to one's health, but with addiction in my blood I play the cards I was dealt.
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Drug culture is extremely prevalent and probably most people know somebody whose life has been affected by drugs, if it's not their own or in their own family, they have friends. It's a never-ending process.
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It's just way more fun making art, growing, grinding for a fan base, and traveling the world with a friend.
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I was always the type of person, and still am the type of person, that I cannot be creative and use substances. So from a very early age I knew that if I wanted to make music, successfully, in any capacity, I was going to have to get sober.
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This moon man right here stands for a lot more. This is the most important record out of all of them. Gay rights are human rights, there is no separation.