Quotes from Rich Brian

When I found out my parents wanted to homeschool me, I was so bummed out. I missed all my friends. But now I realise that if I wasn't homeschooled, I'd be the lamest kid ever - I wouldn't have been able to speak English, for a start.

I've always felt like I could express myself better in English just because the way the grammar works.

I feel like kids naturally love guns, so I was drawn to that.

I was, like, 12 or 13; the first hip hop song I tried to rapping to was Macklemore's 'Thrift Shop,' and my English was so bad, but learning to rap to different songs really helped me with my pronunciation, and looking at the lyrics on Rap Genius and stuff like that.

My main goal was to be a cinematographer. I was making short films, and the plan was to keep uploading them on Twitter and build a fanbase there. One day, I just started making music for fun. When I made 'Dat $tick,' it blew up, and I saw the potential in that.

One day, I was just thinking about something, and then - you know when you think, and you have that inner voice in your head? I realized it was in English.

I'm definitely not making fun of hip-hop.

Being home-schooled, you really get to explore your hobbies, what you want to do for a living.

Hip hop helped me learn about a whole bunch of American culture.

All I have to do is to do my thing. I don't have to talk about it like, 'Oh, I'm representing for Asians.' I'm just... doing it.

'Dat $tick' was the first song I tried to be serious on. Then I thought, Wow, what if I really did this seriously? How dope would that be?'

There are good things about Indonesia, but there are bad things about it that I hope can be fixed.

My dad is constantly looking up my name on Twitter, every single day. He made a Twitter account just for that.

My sister sings, and my brother plays the keyboard.

It took me a while to figure out the U.S. sense of humor, a lot of trial and error. I would write down jokes to casually tell my American friend over Skype to see which ones he'd laugh at.

I'm inspired by a lot of things. I came from Indonesia. I grew up watching a lot of YouTube videos and was inspired by all these other things. I just love making music. I don't think I'm trying to profit off anything. I just like creating stuff.

At, like, 11, I think, that was just me watching a lot of YouTube videos, and I whenever I had the chance, I would talk to myself, practise pronunciation. Then I found out about hip hop and became friends with American people through Twitter. I was like, 'Yo, I need to be in a country where everybody speaks the same language.'

My influences are a wide variety: from Dave Chappelle stand-up comedy specials on YouTube, to watching chick-flick comedy movies, to scrolling through stuff people say on the Internet.

When my family got Internet installed at my house, me and my siblings went crazy and would take turns browsing. I'm homeschooled, too, so I would be on the computer every day. It was so exciting to finally get Internet at my house.

It got to the point where I would wake up at 6 A.M. and go on my phone and tweet something and have it be really good and get lots of retweets... and then I would wake up, because it was actually a dream; I would wake up with my hand holding nothing - an air phone.

I made a Twitter account when I was 10 years old. I wasn't even trying to be funny. I was still tweeting in Indonesian. I didn't really speak English yet.

When you listen deeply to a song, you find all the little sounds they use and subconsciously learn how to produce and mix.

It doesn't really bother me if people misunderstand me. It's cool, but you can't do anything about it.

I remember in Indonesia, there was this actor in a film that got pretty big internationally, and he went to Hollywood. Seeing an Indonesian guy doing that when I was 13 or 14, it really motivated me.