Valee Quotes

My first album, I had to write everything. Nobody was going to send me stuff just because I had a little success.

I like to separate the music- and lyric-writing processes if I can. I'll sort of noodle around on my keyboard and my computer until I have a beat or a chord progression, I'll record it as a loop, export it to iTunes, then walk around with the loop and sort of talk to myself in the loop, and that's how I get the lyrics.

I have to be involved. Whether it's me writing by myself or with other people, I definitely want to have my hand in the creative process. That's part of why I got into music in the first place.

A lot of the stuff I've accumulated over the last few years of touring I thought was really interesting. Like sounds, sound bites, and beats even, but they weren't good dance beats they weren't ones anyone would want to rap over or anything.

I never write from concept. The beat is the beginning, and then I fill in the rest of the song into what it should be.

We influence singing but never really songwriting.

I wrote my first song, 'Conversion', to this little hip-hop instrumental. I went to an open-mic, plugged my iPod into the P.A., and sang over the beat.

I took the process of doing as much myself as I could like a duck to water. I set up my own label and publishing, etc, and it was a fun learning curve two decades ago.

We just wrote songs that seemed good to us. We wrote the album in like two weeks. We could have had more time, but we accomplished what we needed to in the two weeks.

I started writing rhymes first and then put it to the music. I figured out I could lock it to the beat better if I heard the music first. I like to get a lot of tracks, put the track up and let the music talk to me about what it's about.

Writing the songs and producing the songs and arranging them and recording them is your canvas and your palette and your brush.

I love going into the studio with just an idea of the direction. Like, I want this tempo... I love to start from scratch, and the tracks sort of take on a life of their own.

The producing side is always a hard thing for me. I look at Flying Lotus and see producers dropping instrumentals, and I think I should do it myself. I just try to be an artist for myself. That way, it's a lot easier.

Beats are really inspiring. They always make me want to write something over them.

If I gotta do a Jay-Z beat I want to stop everything. Tell everybody hold my calls, everything.

I'm used to producing all of my projects, doing all the beats, and writing all the hooks.

'Who Do You Love' was kinda cool to make. I just made the beat; I was self-determined to make beats at the time.

If I ever do meet John Mayer and we end up in the studio, hopefully he'll bring the guitar, and I'll make a beat to it or something.

I was 16 when I recorded 'Flashlight.' I produced it, made the beat, wrote it, recorded it.

I started by producing, and the rapping came second to that, because I wanted to fill out the beat.

I'm always making tracks. I find that when you make tons of tracks, you stumble upon genius. You can't always turn the drum machine on and right away there's a hot track. Sometimes you luck out. But it can take a lot of time between thinking about the artist, listening to music for inspiration or going to clubs.

Most people when they rap usually have their homies in the studio who rap with 'em, but they homies don't usually be producers.

To me, I'm always trying to look for the energy, to imagine in being played on the dance floor. I guess that's the most important thing in making music for me.

A hot producer might not make a hot beat for me. I just love music.

When I sit down to make music, I try to enter a flow; I always open a blank session and just make something that I feel like making.