I just like blending all the genres together but blending them up in a good way. I try to be as free as I can with it.
'Supafunkrock' is a musical gumbo. We throw all those musical influences into the pot and put it out there.
I come from hip hop for sure, and there are basic elements of that, but then I'll take from somewhere else, like samba, and do it with trap drums. I like going places other people haven't gone before.
I just take rock songs and mix it with hip-hop and a little bit of R&B.
I sing 'I Have Confidence' from 'The Sound of Music' as Judy Garland, Celine Dion, Britney Spears, Elaine Stritch and Julie Andrews - each alternating lines.
I do think that some bands seem to be dabbling in the rock-hip-hop world and are not necessarily serious about it.
I'm mixing country with kind of a modern twist to it.
'White Rabbit' was mostly done in about two days, the music in about half an hour. The music is a 'Bolero' rip-off and the lyrics a rearrangement of 'Alice in Wonderland.' You take two spectacular hits and throw them together, and it's hard to miss.
My sound is a mix between pop, hip-hop, and R&B. It's a good collaborative effort of all three.
Stone Temple Pilots, Bush, and Silverchair are taking the simplest elements of Soundgarden, Nirvana, and Pearl Jam and melding them into one homogenous thing.
I really just blend like rock, R&B and rap together to create a sub-genre, but it's very versatile.
I don't know who I can compare my style to because I listen to everybody from old to new. If I hear stuff that I like, I'll definitely gravitate to it and spin it in my own way. I'm a mixture of a lot of people, honestly, but I'm myself.
I like the idea of blending genres.
My particular space has always been quite unique in popular music. I have a background in R&B and hard rock and straight pop, but I never went all the way with any of those genres.
One thing about Foster the People is that it's taking pieces of a lot of different genres of music and kind of melding them together.
I have crazy, different influences in my songs. I want rap music, I want Congolese rumba, I want salsa, I want dance music, I want hip-hop music, all mixed into one!
I think that what happens is that all of my modern influences blend together with the older soul influences and you get Mayer Hawthorne.
I can sample Blink-182 but put an African vocal sample in there.
The Band is probably the ultimate example of people taking all kinds of music, from gospel to blues to mountain music to folk music to on and on and on and on and putting them all in this big pot and mixing up a new gumbo.
The tapes we were making would jump around with different styles, just quick parts of different songs. Hip-hop to jazz to funk to whatever else. And in a way, 'Check Your Head' ended up being like one of those pause-tapes.
Black Eyed Peas music appealed to everybody and that's why we incorporated EDM influences, dance influences, house influences, and we mashed it up with the Black Eyed Pea melodic pop sensibility that still has bounce to it.
The music is at this weird intersection of dance music and indie music. It's not quite dancey enough to do a full-blown DJ set, and it wasn't quite rock enough for a rock band. But I guess it's what makes us unique - drawing from a lot of different influences.
In the early part of the '70s, we had glam rock, but we also had reggae and ska happening at the same time. I just took all those influences I had as a kid and threw them together, and somehow it works.
Ska is fine. Punk is fine. Putting those two together drove us crazy.
We want to connect all these musical worlds together. We just improvise; we know straight away if its going to work or not. They're not covers - I hate the word cover. We do a transcription: mix it up, put our own spin on it. I think people will be surprised how powerful our show is.
