K. Flay Quotes

I was never just a 'fill in 16 bars on a beat' rapper. I was making real songs from the jump.

Just knowing how to rap doesn't necessarily mean that you're a good songwriter.

I don't sing melodically. Rhyme pattern is how I sing. I also write like a lyricist or an MC because that's what I was before I was a singer. I just took those elements and put them into music.

You don't have to be a good singer any more if you can rap well.

I feel like with a lot of Madlib's beats, they are made for storytelling. I feel like when I'm working on stuff with him, I can really get into the storytelling aspect mode of my flow.

Catchy lyrics are being given more importance.

I'm really big into lyrics in my own songs, so I look up to Drake in that aspect.

You hear what Thug says in his songs - the musical level of it is so crazy that it doesn't register with some people, so they call it trash. But anybody who loves music can appreciate what he's doing.

I've worked really, really hard on my lyricism.

Popular music usually has a chorus that needs to repeat, and people need to remember the song. That's sort of the major guideline when you're writing a song.

One of the hardest things about writing lyrics is to make the lyrics sit on the music in such a way that you're not aware there was a writer there.

I've always been jealous of rappers, because they can fit so many words into a song and tell a story with lots of details. But when you're a songwriter, you have to fit the words to the melody and you can't fit as much in. I'm just a big fan of storytelling.

I think rap music is rap music. I mean, are there heavy writing aspects of it? Absolutely. In a sense, is it poetry? Yeah. I've heard that so much, growing up in a house with poetry. But I think people like to use that as a shortcut for who's good and who's not. It's like the word 'lyrical' - 'lyrical' is the worst word in the entire world.

Rap is only one end of a whole spectrum of verbal play and virtuosity. Rap is geared for aural pleasure.

I'm not tryin' to come off as the best lyricist.

I'd say almost that words come first, melody second.

It takes a certain type of rapper for me to really get into the album.

I've been known to drop a spoken-word bit into a song from time to time. But not straight-up rap. I don't know that I have that gift.

Many of my songs just come together in quatrains because that's how a hymn goes.

I write lyrics based on music, on a musical flow, and what sounds good at the time.

The fact that rap has a strict meter and stays to a click means that you have to make your thoughts concise.

Ultimately, I really like to rap, and seeing what I can do to keep it fresh for myself has lent itself to tailoring over time.

That's what I used to do; I would just go into the studio and just rap. But it's all about coming up with dope concepts and dope hooks.

My music is airy; it's spacious. It requires you to be able to rap and articulate your message over it. That's what the beat demands of you. Not a lot of people try to rap over my beats because it's a bit of a task.

When I first started making music, I was pretty drawn to hip-hop beats wrapped together with super-good lyrics. The most important thing in that is wordplay, so that stayed with me when I started writing songs.