Quotes About Lyrics

I think throughout the day; there are always lines or certain words, and I'll just keep notes in my phone. It might just be one or two words, and then that could inspire a whole song, lyrically.

When I realized I could write lyrics and let someone that I knew listen to them, but not know that the song was about them - say it was a girl. I could write this song about how I feel about this girl, I could play it to them. I just loved it, because all of the words would speak to them. I could see them slowly falling in love with me.

A lot of underground hip-hop will inspire me as far as rhyme patterns - really wordy, intelligent lyrics.

Yes, basically, like you said, I'll work out a chord pattern and work out the lyrics over that.

I like writing a body of music that has a cohesive, emotional thread through it.

At first, I was using my sister Susan's lyrics, as I could not write myself, only the music. And then one day, she and I had a fight, and she threatened to take away the lyrics from all the songs that I put the lyrics to, so it was that day that I began writing my first lyric to the music.

I just freestyle. I don't actually write the words on paper. It's just whatever comes into my mind. I'll record three or four lines at a time, get a good take, and do three or four more. It may be whatever comes into my mind. But I care about my craft a lot more than a lot of other people.

I admire pop songs that are perfect at three minutes.

Somebody told me once it takes an Americana song five minutes to say what a country song says in three - so I try to write country songs. But really, all good music is just soul music.

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.

I just go into the studio, look at the lyrics for the first time when I put them on the piano, and go. If I haven't got it within 40 minutes, I give up. It's never changed, the thrill has never gone, because I don't know what I'm going to get next.

Being an M.C. is all about just going for the throat.

Jay-Z was huge. I was like 2 years old throwing up my diamond, rapping. I know all of 'The Blueprint.' I've heard that album 1,000 times. And 'Reasonable Doubt.'

Consciousness rap - a term that I don't think exactly exists but gets thrown around a lot - is not exactly popular.

I've never thrown away a rhyme book.

I'm a thug and I rap.

Sometimes, the songs that really affected me were not from the artist catalogue of their music, like the song 'Thunder Road' by Bruce Springsteen. I never got into any of his other music, but that song, to this day, is in my top three lyrical masterpieces of all time.

The first song I wrote was called 'Baby Darling Darling Girl,' and you know what's funny? It went, 'Baby darling darling girl, I really love your Jheri Curl.' I thought it was tight as hell.

I could rap really good on accident. I talk tight and it just sounded... I don't know. It's just such a big genre for me. At the end of the day, rap is the language of the world.

Other memories stick, no matter how much you wish they wouldn't. They're like a song you hate but can't ever get completely out of your head, and this song becomes the background noise of your entire life, snippets of lyrics and lines of music floating up and then receding, a crazy kind of tide that never stops.

Most of the lyrics are over a year old, and it doesn't feel like it's about me. Time created a distance.

I have a very young brother and sister, and if you can get a kid singing the words to a song after they heard it for the first time, it's a hit.

The biggest fool to hit the big time and all I've got to do is act naturally.

People ask me if I left the lyrics open to ambiguity. Of course I did. I wanted to make a whole series of complex statements. The lyrics had to do with the state of society at the time.