Sometimes, I make 50 songs and pick out the best 10. I've been in the studio all day, all night, making the beat, writing the raps. You never know what's gonna be a hit.
I think my music has connected with the audience because I always have a clear vision about my songs.
It's very hard to write a song alone. It's only by jamming that you can get a song together.
I can write a song in about an hour if it's a simple country song.
There is no formula to it. Writing every song is a little journey. The first note has to lift you.
R. Kelly is different - music is always going through his brain. I remember we'd be having a conversation, and he'd choose a word I said and write a whole song to it.
As for me, I rarely write a song. But when I do write a song, like "Ain't No Chimneys in the Projects," which came to me at three a.m. one morning, on a whim - I get a percentage.
Melody is the first thing that comes to me when I'm songwriting. I learned piano classically first, and then I went into soul, and so melody has always been the first. It's so important.
I've always tended to write songs prolifically.
'Are 'Friends' Electric?' was two songs: the verse part and the talking part. Two different songs I couldn't finish. One day I was playing the main verse part of 'Are 'Friends' Electric?' and after a few minutes I got frustrated, as normal, then started to play the other song, and realized they went together.
You can make a hit song in 15 minutes. I don't know about someone else's song, but songs that people like of mine, I've created in 15 minutes or less.
I just hear a beat and start mumbling words. I just hear sounds and rhythms, and it just kind of comes intuitively. Formatting a song, figuring out a flow, how I respond to the beat.
I actually played guitar before I played drums. And I always play guitar on the Slipknot albums as well, as well as being responsible for a lot of the songwriting.
When I am seriously composing, sometimes a phrase will come into my head, a catch phrase. When I was writing pop songs for a few years, as a career, separate from my folksinging career, I used to write songs for pop singers.
When I write the music for any of my songs, I write as a composer-lyricist in my head.
When I'm creating a song, I'm thinking of a hip-hop beat playing on a live drum set - kinda like the Roots would do. I will put New Orleans music on top of that with some other rhythms.
The first time I wrote a song, I couldn't really believe - 'Can you just do that? You're just allowed?' I never thought about songs on the radio and who wrote them.
I'd like to be writing songs for other people - I just like writing songs.
When it comes to song creation, I throw in my ideas and have it discussed with the producer. The song gets its own characteristic as new ideas are incorporated.
Writing a song is a long road. Or it can be.
Usually I start with a beat, I start making a beat, and my producer side is making the beat. And on a good day, my rapper side will jump in and start the writing process - maybe come up with a hook or start a verse. Sometimes it just happens like that. A song like 'Lights Please' happens like that.
I made my first complete song when I was 9.
Most of everything I've ever written actually was written on acoustic. 'Do You Feel' was written on electric. 'I'm in You' was written on piano.
The phrase 'pumped up kicks,' man, I was excited when I came up with that.
When I wrote 'Paradise,' it was going to be an interlude - like a segue from the song before. Then I just added more to it because everyone loved it.
