Iconic artists are never straight ahead. Michael Jackson loved Elvis and Burt Bacharach, and uniquely blended both of them into what he did.
Usually as humans and especially as a man, we look at things in context. It’s like, oh, I know what that is, that’s this, or this, there’s that.
As a kid, I always had a super vivid imagination, like “Man, I like those shoes, but they should’ve made them in purple” or like, “Man, I wonder how people make songs.”
When I make music, I try to make something that is super colorful and something you’ve never heard before, so when you hear the whole album, it’s a good feeling. Musically that’s what I aspire to do whenever I’m making an album.
I’ve never seen myself as an artist. So when that happened it was like a whole other crazy thing.
Failure is not always a bad thing. You just have to be smart while you’re in the middle of it. You’re in the eye of the tornado of like disappointment to know that it’s just a storm and it’ll pass.
Failure hurts pretty bad. But when you got good people around you they remind you that failure is actually just a lesson. It’s how not to walk so you don’t fall again.
The Internet is just it’s great in a lot of ways and it has its disadvantages. But one of the great advantages is the ubiquity – virtually anyone can be discovered and things catch like fire when they’re great.
I’m very lazy, it’s just that I love music and I love the things that I get to do. That’s why I feel so blessed.
If someone asks me what inspires me, I always say, “That which is missing,” because I don’t want to copy everything that’s already happening. I feel like when you copy, you blend in, and when you blend in, you get lost.
The most important thing is just like creativity and music. It’s the one thing that you never lose if you just stay loyal to that.
Music is what I love to do. Music, fashion, a couple of chairs, I’m cool, I’m grateful.
As individuals, I just think that our biggest responsibility is to be self-aware, and some of us are not.
I prefer a woman’s way of dealing with things.
Most of my company is run by women. There’s a certain sensitivity to what I want to express, so that’s what I want around me.
Every piece of technology, every piece of art, basically everything manmade comes from an idea.
We’re nothing without science. Nothing.
The odds are so stacked against you to have a music career in a place where there’s virtually no music industry. So I always attribute it to God.
Sometimes when you’re listening to a neuroscientist, they have a tendency to use a particular type of jargon that works in their world perfectly but that would lose the average layman.
Tokyo is like the New York of Asia. Although the people there are all basically from Japan, they celebrate what they like about various cultures.
Go inward, so that you can go onward and then upward.