Quotes from DJ Premier

I always followed my heart and if my heart said I gotta pack up and go, I'm gone.

The passing of my accountant, Mary Coleman, who was the first person I shouted out on 'In Memory of...' was particularly devastating for me. She was beyond my accountant. She was my mother away from home.

I'm known for taking a long time getting music out, partially, my schedule is bananas, I'm only human, and then on top of that, I'm a one-man-producer.

Dre is someone I've looked up to since 1985 when he came to my college and performed with The Wrecking Crew.

I'm a bass player and I'm a drummer - I'm a big fan of bass players.

I'm cool with Dr. Dre, I have his phone number, and he picks up when I call.

I'm passionate about music in general, not just hip-hop. But when it comes to hip-hop, I don't wanna see it die culturally.

Bad Name' is just that head-nod, traditional loop over a breakbeat, chopped up, and it sounds like the way I do my thing.

If you don't have any Coltrane, 'A Love Supreme' will do it for you. It will explain everything. Even if you don't get it, it will still explain everything. That's how deep it is.

When I got my knee replacement and I opened my eyes straight outta surgery, the first person standing there was Guru's son.

I like soul, I like rock, I like new wave, I like punk music, I like blues, I like jazz, and I was brought up on all of them from a young boy all the way to my teenage years, when I was wild and crazy, in college.

I'm not really a crying type.

That's the thing with social media: it's a gift and a curse. It's cool on one level, but it's also bad.

Guru had such a different voice from most people. Plus he had a Boston accent! So, I always made sure the beats were tailored to him.

I grew up in a town called Prairie View. It's like 45 minutes outside of Houston.

Everything I do is in a New York state of mind. I'm indebted to preserving the sound of the city.

Everybody deserves a piece of where they live, in some type of fashion. Music is just my way of preserving that.

I've done some scoring in the past, but I want to get into it on a bigger level - a Danny Elfman level.

I'm real particular about delivery. You can write the illest rhymes in the world, but can you deliver it right?

I don't usually collab with producers, because I don't need to. I never have, because I don't want to break my style of how I do things.

When you have a deep focus, you can't go wrong at all. Not when you're an expert at what you do.

When I miss Guru, I bump one of our records. Then I shed a tear and get back to work.

The ghetto music of my era is hip-hop. And Parliament, and Curtis Mayfield, and Marvin Gaye, that was all the ghetto stuff when I was a baby, and then when I was a teenager it was hip-hop and we were taking all those old '70s sounds and recreating them and putting them into a hip-hop format.

The Nike joint 'Classic' with Kanye, Nas, KRS-One, that was a remix - Rick Rubin did the original, and his was a double-time tempo; mine was a regular boom-bap tempo, and they liked it so much that we ended up doing the video to it.