Quotes About Influence

I know friends who took what I call the easy way and some of them are now dead, or in jail, because they were involved in bad things.

I'm not a fan of anybody music who I feel like a sucka. I don't listen to you. They play you in the club, you can have the #1 jam, but if I know your character, how can I listen to your music?

I was on the pro-Nirvana, anti-Pearl Jam bandwagon.

When the generation after me started getting on the cut, a lot of them would call me over to hang out or go jam and scratch and they were always separate from each other.

I go to lectures and girls are finding out about Bikini Kill or Le Tigre for the first time and are like,' This is my jam!' It still feels fresh to them.

I remember 'Def Comedy Jam' being a big deal and kids talking about it in school, but it was never, 'I want to do that.'

In high school, I listened to The Jam, stuff like that, a lot of English bands, really. And then I got into anarcho-punk bands that nobody had heard of.

We come from a generation where the music was very innovative, a lot of it coming out of blues and influenced by blues: the idea was that you would jam on things, and you'd try things out. You took a journey, and you took a left turn, and you experimented live right there in the moment.

I don't really have a blueprint to follow besides watching interviews. Well, I guess the blueprint I do follow is Def Jam, in a way, just because it started in a small space, which is so similar to how we started.

My entryway into hip-hop was - my biggest introduction was obviously like, you know, the Def Jam, Run D.M.C., Beastie Boys, like, that conglomerate.

I always loved slow jams and wanted to make them, but didn't know how I could because I couldn't sing. Then Barry White made 'Love Serenade' in which all he did was talk the entire jam. I said, 'I can do that.'

I was watching 'Space Jam' when I was a kid but that was pretty much the only thing I knew about the NBA.

Even if I wasn't in music, even if my father was a carpenter, some guy in Jamaica would go 'You're just like Bob. You're just like your father.' That happens in Jamaica all the time.

I grew up until I was seven in Jamaica with my grandmother, who I still think of as the greatest person I have known in my life.

Bob's whole life is about Africa. It is not about Jamaica.

I'm always getting confused with LeBron James. Everywhere I go, I'm LeBron James.

I started learning everybody's riffs, from Donny Hathaway to Jeffrey Osborne to James Ingram. That helped me create my own style of singing.

I was a James Brown junkie as a kid.

You want a hero in the music world? James Brown. He brought a feeling to music without really using words. He's just famous for his sound.

Everybody tell me everywhere I go that I'm the closest thing to James Brown they ever seen.

If it weren't for the mentorship and guidance from people like my mother, James Brown and others, I wouldn't have been able to make something of my life.

I feel like LeBron James is an amazing basketball player, but he's also a community person.

I was LeBron James before LeBron James.

Prince is from the school of James Brown, and I love James Brown because of all the great rhythms he plays.