Quotes About Influence

I grew up in Ann Arbor, about 25 miles west of Detroit. And when you grow up in that area, you get a healthy dose of Motown automatically.

Everything that the West is today is predominantly because of Africa.

The West sometimes doesn't understand Bollywood, but they can definitely understand how Bollywood influences people.

We use American influence with Israel not to promote economic growth in the West Bank, but to try and impede Jewish - never Arab - construction in the capital city.

People forget how dominant Public Enemy became in the mid '80s. No one talks about how transformative they were. And then that led to the '90s and the sort of East Coast v. West Coast stuff, which is kinda when I came of age.

When we first came out it was this happy accident, and I was sort of into hardcore at the time. Jordan our singer was really into Jawbreaker and a lot of indie rock bands and old Dischord bands, and sort of like more of the indie side of music. Our bass player was really into West Coast punk.

The way I rap is very west coast.

A lot of rappers were influenced off the West Coast, even from the East.

I'm really drawn to West Coast composers and I think it has a little something to do with looking across the Pacific instead of looking across the Atlantic.

Seattle, they like the Bay a lot. They like the Bay area sound, the West Coast sound.

But then again in the East Coast, I think, Tupac, inspired everybody on the East Coast, everybody down south, everybody in the West Coast you know what sayin'.

Half of my family is in Los Angeles, so my cousin was the first person to play me, like, Snoop Dogg, and I would always feel like, 'OMG, I shouldn't be listening to this,' and my other cousin was the first to introduce me to Aaliyah, so every time I'd go to the West Coast, I'd get those West Coast vibes.

When Wu-Tang came, Wu-Tang was for that era, right there. When Dre had it in the West Coast, it was for that time. Biggie and them, it was for that time.

Hip-hop was a big part of my life growing up, especially West Coast gangster rap.

I knew what my father, more than anything else, wanted me to do. Seventeen, vain, and spoiled by poems, I prepared to enter a remote West Point. I would succeed there, it was hoped, as he had.

My background did not start with the East Side; it started with Greenwich Village, which is West Side.

When you say you grew up in Los Angeles, a lot of people think the west side: they think the glitz and all this stuff that I actually had no relationship to growing up.

I was about seven or eight years old when I first heard West Side Story, and it had a huge impact on me. If you look at the elements of that record, it contains many of the things I enjoy doing today.

I am a genre lover - everything from spaghetti western to samurai movie.

Western music is Bach, Handel and Schubert. It's good music, cleverly done. As a musician, I can see that.

I was born Muslim, but for a large part of my life, I wasn't necessarily raised Muslim. My father always kept everything around us, from Western philosophy to Eastern philosophy.

As a matter of fact, I find the Western cinema very fantastic.

If you consider film an art form, as some people do, then the Western would be a truly American art form, much as jazz is.

I came, I studied architecture in America, so my technical background's completely western. But my seventeen years, the formative years of one's life, and I can't say that the Chineseness in me is not there.