- All Quotes
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I wish I could make music about politics. I feel like it's such an art and a talent that I admire tremendously, but when I step into the studio, I step out of the real world, and it's therapeutic.
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I'm a studio rat.
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The game is changing with songs like 'Earned It' as opposed to it changing me.
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'Eastern Promises' is great.
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My mother, my grandmother, my uncles would play Ethiopian artists like Aster Aweke and Mulatu Astatke all the time in the house.
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I always hated how I looked on camera. I never put a face to my music, which actually made the music that much more mysterious.
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I wanted to drop three albums in a year because no one had done it. It was bold, unheard of.
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I don't believe in icons.
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I couldn't ever go back home without being something. I probably would never have gone back home. That was definitely a big motivation. To get back home, and not empty-handed.
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I feel like the way I was raised was to be able to see through all the titles in this world - from religion to race.
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I was very camera shy. People like hot girls, so I put my music to hot girls and it just became a trend. The whole 'enigmatic artist' thing, I just ran with it. No one could find pictures of me.
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I love trying new things.
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When I was born, that was the music my mother was listening to. Michael Jackson is a third parent to me.
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The whole 'enigmatic artist' thing, I just ran with it.
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I just want to keep pushing the envelope without it feeling forced.
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I sang a lot of low stuff on songs like 'Secrets' and 'Rockin',' almost like Toni Braxton. On 'Secrets,' I'm a different person.
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Prince turned experimental music into pop music. 'When Doves Cry,' the whole 'Purple Rain' soundtrack - he was inspired by the Cocteau Twins and new wave pop and brought it into R&B when he first started, and then it became this cool, next-level, kind of hard-to-digest music. Which is what I felt 'House of Balloons' was.
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I didn't like the way I looked in pictures - when I saw myself on a digital camera, I was like, 'Eesh.'
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Going to a therapist is not something you do when you're growing up as a street kid in Toronto.
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My closet is like Bart Simpson's.
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Nothing is stopping me from doing what I love to do.
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The vibe on 'Starboy' comes from that hip-hop culture of braggadocio, from Wu-Tang and 50 Cent, the kind of music I listened to as a kid.
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I usually don't like to 'spoon feed' my audience, because I grew up idolizing story tellers who tell stories using symbolism, so it was in my nature to do the same.
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Bragging just sounds good, man.