Music goes way back before language does. And music is like the key to a whole spiritual existence which this society doesn't even talk about. We know it's there. The Grateful Dead plays at religious services essentially. We play at the religious services of the new age. Everybody gets high, and that's what it's all about really. Getting high is a lot more real than listening to a politician. You can think that getting high actually did happen - that you danced, and got sweaty, and carried on. It really did happen. I know when it happens. I know it when it happens every time.
They say the music you listen to in your formative years stays with you and leaves an impression for the rest of your life. For me, the things that I fell in love with happened in the '70s, when artists were nurtured by record companies and it wasn't about singles.
When I talk about music in Memphis, it's a place you can go if you are a beginning artist or anywhere in your career, and you can incubate.
I was four days old when I went to my first bluegrass festival.
Today, you're either very big or you're playing stadiums or you're not playing anymore. You're either popular where everybody will go to a 20,000 seat arena to see you or they won't go to see you at all.
I'm definitely nostalgic about the music of my youth; The Clash and Fishbone and that whole music scene. I still have all that music to this day. There was some great music going on in the late 70s and 80s.
I'm really into, like, characters - music characters like Sid Vicious and Kurt Cobain - just, like, how they are and stuff. Like Lil Wayne.
I think Baltimore is a wonderful artistic community with a lot of great musicians. It's kind of like a little secret for musicians.
Memphis is the place where rock was born and Martin Luther King, Jr., was killed. It's full of contradictions, abject poverty, and riches that only music can provide.
I hate that sense of entitlement or the sense of business crawling into playing music.
A lot of times, when people say hip-hop, they don't know what they're talking about. They just think of the rappers. When you talk about hip-hop, you're talking about the whole culture and movement. You have to take the whole culture for what it is.
It really does help everyone when there are some big bands leading the charge.
People put mixtapes out every few months, every year. They come often. Not 'Mood Muzik.' It's a totally different type of monster. And when you hear it, you should be able to understand why.
I think we're in a very low point of music right now.
I met Drake. That was crazy. Chief Keef, that was another crazy one. Obviously, people like Ski Mask The Slump God, that's my boy.
Why would heavy metal ever go away?
There is a lot of music in the world that I love that does not always get the appropriate exposure.
In the old days, people shared music; they didn't care who made it. A song would be owned by a village, and anyone could sing it, change the words, whatever. That is how humans treated music until the late 19th century. Now, with the Internet, we are going back to having tribal attitudes towards music.
I don't read a lot of rock magazines for the most part.
I just don't get that new hot music. I don't know anything about all these groups like U2.
Definitely just growing up in general influenced me; Detroit happened to be where I was. I feel like the city definitely has made an impact on my life and made me who I am. Detroit has an unmistakable soul - nobody can duplicate the soul we bring to the game. From Motown to J Dilla to Eminem to anything.
It started in Georgia. Everyone sings there. I mean, it's all they do. So at eight, I heard a lot of Georgian singing, which is often really complicated, with seven- or eight-part harmonies.
It was all about music, about getting your friends to come and see you play. I don't see that same intimacy happening very much today.
The whole experience of getting an album from an artist you like and listening to it from beginning to end is sort of gone. Now it's piecemeal.
For a composer of concert music, 40 is actually very young. But for a rock musician, 40 is almost past due, where you think of rock music as really part of more youth-oriented culture.
