The World Motivation
American music comes from the same tree, but sometimes we get to these places in history where we forget where things come from, and they get compartmentalized.
“American music comes from the same tree, but sometimes we get to these places in history where we forget where things come from, and they get compartmentalized.”
American music comes from the same tree, but sometimes we get to these places in history where we forget where things come from, and they get compartmentalized.
We've now got a whole generation of jazz musicians who have been brought up with hip-hop. We've grown up alongside rappers and DJs; we've heard this music all our life. We are as fluent in J Dilla and Dr Dre as we are in Mingus and Coltrane.
At a certain point, when there's a barrier between you and what's right, eventually you have to decide you're not going to allow yourself to be subjugated.
Whenever my dad wasn't practicing, he was listening to music. He had an amazing jazz collection, and my mom had stuff like Chaka Khan to help balance it out.
Hip hop is the new rock n' roll, you know what I mean? And anybody who doesn't think that is just sort of living in the past. It's all just American music, really, when you get right down to it.
You start learning English in fifth grade. I was 12. But even before then I was listening to American music. My neighbor was a really big hip-hop fan, so he taught me everything around hip-hop.
The blues. It runs through all American music. Somebody bending the note. The other is the two-beat groove. It's in New Orleans music, it's in jazz, it's in country music, it's in gospel.
I've fallen in love with South American music: Tango, the music of Argentina, the music of Brazil, Stan Getz, Bebel Gilberto.