The World Motivation
My music is pretty versatile; I have a lot of genres and styles. I don't think I should be pigeonholed into one thing. So we'll see where my career goes.
“My music is pretty versatile; I have a lot of genres and styles. I don't think I should be pigeonholed into one thing. So we'll see where my career goes.”
My music is pretty versatile; I have a lot of genres and styles. I don't think I should be pigeonholed into one thing. So we'll see where my career goes.
I did pretty well busking. I would play two to eight hours a day, and I could make two or three hundred an hour.
I went to a public school in Oak Harbor, Ohio, and it's a very rural community. I was an artist kid, and I just didn't fit in very well.
I did grow up poor. My mom managed to get a job as a custodian at our church, and it was really just a favor for her, and my dad's an electrician - just a blue-collar family, and the house was usually falling apart.
I don't steer clear of genres. I simply haven't steered myself toward some of them.
I think it's really hard to move between genres, and I think, especially in Britain, we're very judgmental about it - me included. I know that when an actor comes out with some poetry or an album, I think, 'Oh crikey, what's this going to be like?'
We get to be like music. You might be into rock, you might be into hip-hop, you might be into R&B. Comedy gets genres now. You might be into absurdist comedy, slapstick comedy. It's exciting.
I have written in a lot of genres, that's true, and I'm not sure it's always served my career well.
Growing up, my parents did everything they knew how to do to support me. My dad was always kinda my roadie; he drove me from gig to gig. But I got my own gigs. I was this 12-year-old kid, shuffling business cards, calling people, telling them I wanted to play.
Black Ken' debuted number one on iTunes in hip-hop, and top five or ten top, top five on the whole iTunes, on all genres. It was really cool to be able to self-produce.