El DeBarge Quotes

It's taken folk a while to come around, hasn't it? Even the boys in the band weren't too sure about the whole art thing. They just wanted me to concentrate on the music. But they respect it now.

I'm not the first guy to make a record or to make hip-hop, but I did it differently.

Finding out about Bjork was like finding out about some rare and magical thing that I had never encountered living where I was living at the time, being surrounded by the people I was surrounded by.

I'll always remember when I first heard Lester [Young]. I'd never heard anyone like him before. He was a stylist with a different sound. A sound I'd never heard before or since. To be honest with you, I didn't much like it at first.

Inside, I've got a real purist desire and dream about the music. I like the idea of being able to carve out a kind of magical, colourful, artistic, inspirational life. And the reality just turns out to be quite different, working with the business to bring this thing you have created into the world.

I'm always trying to come up with something new and unique. I do a beatbox with a harmonica.

I want to work with producers who are unique and have a different sound.

We're not trying to change the world; just music.

I've never been good at rock'n'roll songs, anyway; either I'm blessed or I'm cursed, but whatever I write comes out sounding old.

In any art form, in Hollywood or in music, there is a handful of people who really, you know, move the envelope.

GaGa is one of my favourites. Her voice is incredible and she's fearless and she's ahead of the game. She's ahead of the entire game, and I admire that.

I will revolutionise art and the world. Hurrah!

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

Dealing with those personalities and the people who run this music thing has been most challenging. It's hard to really communicate things to people who run a business yet forget the nature of the business. They only look at the bottom line and the financial return, you know, they forget what it is they're packaging. It's art.

I only choose musicians who I think will emerge, can emerge, with their own character, while still going along with the tune in question.

Just understand that the type of music that I make is something special.

I'd want to direct a video for Yoko Ono. As long as I got to work with Yoko Ono someday, I'd be really happy. I just think she's such a great artist - it would just be so nice.

I'm not just a hip-hop artist; I feel like I'm a rock star.

There's a lot of rappers out there, a lot of gay girls expressing themselves; I'm not the first to say it; I'm not the first to rap about it. But I'm the one who broke down those doors that everybody has been trying to break down. I did that. I'm the one who went triple platinum first.

The cool thing about G.O.O.D. Music is it's a bunch of great ideas, and I'm one of those ideas.

I know it is one of the most important instruments and inventions, the electric guitar, to me, since television or movies or anything like that.

At Diversion, we want to do genres that people are not doing - or, if we're doing genres that people are doing, to do them in a fresh way.

I believe what Wondaland is doing is creating depth.

Azealia Banks - love what she's doing.

What I ended up learning was that I had to do what I do well, and do it really well and say, 'Maybe there is no pop music that sounds like this now, but I can make it so maybe tomorrow what I like can be what everybody likes.'