My greatest contribution to hip-hop was allowing the United States of America to know and understand exactly how far they reach, and how influential they are to children in completely different countries because I am the import.
The popular song is America's greatest ambassador.
It's a great thing that the United States has given the rest of the world - no other country has given such great popular music to the Far East and Europe. When I play those great countries, a lot of times, the audience starts singing the songs with me. They know them. They love them.
From jazz, the blues, country and rock to Hollywood movies, culture has in many ways been our greatest export (or our most obnoxious one, depending on your point of view).
I was one of the first American rock n' rollers in the '50s to go to many foreign countries. It's a wonderful thing to go out and spread joy and love rather than hate.
We feel we're the only British group worth exporting since the Sex Pistols, definitely.
When jazz is played in another nation, it is called American. When it is played in another country, it sounds false. Jazz is the result of the energy stored up in America.
We're absolutely American and distinctly so, I think. That's part of what people respond to outside of this country, part of the reason that we're such a huge band outside of the U.S., where we're not so popular now as we were 10 or 12 years ago.
I have a personal relationship with Dizzee Rascal - I know him, he's cool - so this is no disrespect to him or any other British rappers who tried to make it in America, like Wiley and Tinie Tempah, but the type of music they were making to be accepted over there - it doesn't translate.
My father was interested in bringing reggae music to the entire world.
It's always hard for an artist from the U.K. to break into the United States. It's especially harder for a rapper because hip-hop is such an American art form.
I want to help promote Korean music around the world.
Thanks to many great K-pop singers, the groundwork has been laid for more Korean songs to be readily accessible to an overseas audience via channels like YouTube.
I feel so honored that I'm bringing part of the culture of my country to other countries, you know, like the funk music.
The UK is always ahead of their time in music, and America always follows them five years later.
We are living in a time when American popular music is finally being recognized as one of our most successful exports. The demand is huge.
When I was trying to make songs to go to America, to go to Japan, they'd never work.
One of the reasons I wanted to do a show about Nashville in Nashville was because when I lived here, the hardest thing to go out and hear was country music. Country was taking place inside the studio and it was an export.
Unfortunately, in Korea, I feel like some people are just seeing the dollar signs and sending out artists into the foreign markets who aren't fully prepared.
To me, a big crossover was what happened to me years ago, like bringing my music in Spanish to Europe, or Asia. To me, that's a crossover because Spanish is not a language that everybody talks.
When you live in a small country such as Israel, the dream of any musician is to go abroad.
