Madlib Quotes

I'm not looking to go out there and make a rhythmic Timbaland track.

To me, it's all about opening all the doors and getting people to be not only prolific, but creative and having control of their music.

I go to clubs and if I notice the DJs are playing the records faster, then I'll push the beats a little on the next record I make. A lot of people don't know how to watch out for things like that.

People don't understand how long it really takes to find beats. Sometimes they're not all the way there, but it's elements in them I love. Then I get to take them to get chopped up. Ye got to cook over a few of them.

When Thug hears a song, he knows how the whole shape of the thing goes. He can nudge the whole frame to the left to make it offbeat and sound how he wants it to sound.

I started playing instruments before I started making beats, and I was never the best guitarist or the best pianist or the best drummer. And when I started making beats, I was not the best beatmaker, and when I started making hooks, I was not the best vocal melody person. When I first started rapping, I wasn't the best rapper at all.

I've mainly been sampling jazz because the tone of the chords are expressive in itself, so it's quite nice to write over.

If you don't have an album or you don't have any tune, you can't start.

It is the melody which is the charm of music, and it is that which is most difficult to produce. The invention of a fine melody is a work of genius.

I maintain that the best song is the one that ends up on the album. So whether I've written it or I haven't, I'm very comfortable with both.

With every song, all the elements have to work. First, the beat has to be great - you start there. You start with the music, and then the ideas follow. Then you start thinking of rhymes, and then you record it, and sometimes - this happens to me a lot - it doesn't come out as good as it did in my head when I first wrote it.

I play the living hell out of my guitars daily, and as sure as the sun rises in the east, killer licks, ideas, grooves, patterns and songs erupt every time.

I've done so many albums where I've been in the studio for 14 hours a day for six months just trying to come up with things on my own. It's a nice change helping other people with their music and not being all about what I'm trying to do myself.

Whether I'm making my own record, or playing a guitar part, I want what I do to have an impact.

You have to change musically. Bubble gum pop was good for the first time you have sex. They didn't want to give the OK on some really good music. It was the frustration of being signed to that label. I was depressed.

If you're in music, you're in music, and if you're in music you just want to keep making records and playing. That's what it's about, isn't it? At least, that's what I always thought it was about, anyway.

I guess every musician looks forward to a point where they can just kind of make an album that truly is like a nice art album.

It's really exciting working with a new band when you feel like you hit something that's great, and you helped them bring something out.

For music, I always just played music myself - and, I had rock bands and wrote songs and put bands together that were loud, but not especially good. That was sort of the place music had in my career.

I don't love performing, because it's nerve-racking and it's time - consuming to rehearse a whole set - and my time can often be better served writing music and just making it and putting it out.

The thing with 50 Words of Snow is that it was literally back-to-back from Director's Cut [also released in 2011]. It was more or less that I got to make two albums in one hit. I was already in this space in my mind to be writing and making an album.

I hear melodies and hooks all day. I've always been that way, since I was a kid.

I found it easy to produce. I'm not the musical guy. I can't read and play music like that, but put some drums and a sample in front of me and I can whip it up nice, and I'll work out some keys and find some interesting instruments to put under it.

I want to make music as good as Radiohead, as good as Coldplay. I can make hip-hop as good as anybody.

But we're still rehearsing and planning to make a new album next year. We have some really good new songs that we've already been playing on that last tour that we just finished.