The only justification for looking down on anyone, is that you’re going to stop and pick them up.
I think the attraction of ‘American Idol’ is about the basic human nature attitude that is, ‘We can put you up there. But we can take you down.’
If architecture is frozen music then music must be liquid architecture.
It’s amazing how much trouble you can get in when you don’t have anything else to do.
I tell my kids and I tell proteges, always have humility when you create and grace when you succeed, because it’s not about you. You are a terminal for a higher power. As soon as you accept that, you can do it forever.
Young people should travel, and they don’t. You can’t know if you don’t go.
I travel like a maniac. I travel more than anyone I know. I love learning the languages.
Music in movies is all about dissonance and consonance, tension and release.
Imagine what a harmonious world it could be if every single person, both young and old shared a little of what he is good at doing.
I was raised in Chicago and I guess that was one of the special breeding grounds for gangsters of all colors. That was the Detroit of the gangster world. The car industry was thugs.
Few rappers realize the genre sprang from West African griots through Delta slave songs to jazz poetry and the comedic trash talk of ‘the dozens.’