Quotes About Beats

I'm a big hip-hop fan since being a kid. It was the first music that spoke to me and made me feel like, 'Yeah.'

Part of the lore of the Mirage poker room was the four-day $600-$1,200 game Ted played with Hamid Dastmalchi, the 1992 World Champion and a man similarly possessed of a cast-iron constitution. At the end of it, Dastmalchi was taken out of the Mirage in an ambulance. Forrest joked that it was all the bad beats he showed Hamid, but it may have had more to do with the estimated fifty packs of cigarettes Dastmalchi smoked during the game.

I'm trying to open up my range and really sing more. With The Fugees initially, and even with 'Miseducation,' it was very hip-hop - always a singing over beats. I don't think people have really heard me sing out. So if I do record again, perhaps it will have an expanded context. Where people can hear a bit more.

I love playing out. I love dance music, I love minimal electro. Especially hearing that in clubs, it's a nod to that really.

Themes are important to me, but the beats are what catches someone's ear and makes a record a hit, ... The music is more important than anything. You can have instrumental tracks and people will listen to it. But if you put a really good theme to a bad beat, no one will care about it.

A lot of the music that you listen to now is because of the things that the Meters did, the Neville Brothers did, and they're there, the guys who invented those beats that the guys sample today. Such an enormous opportunity.

I like jamming to rap.

I used to love listening to Jazzy Jeff.

Joe and I always say that our guide through action is always story and character. We're always driving right at the character beats, or else the action beat doesn't work.

I was working for Johnny Shipes in New York when I was 17 years old, getting beats off.

I'm doing bass trap; I'm doing EDM songs.

When I was cutting hair, I felt like that was my trap. I started selling haircuts. I started selling beats; that's me trapping. So trap music is like hustling music to me.

When I started making beats in the 7th grade - even through middle school and high school - I admired a lot of Shawty Redd, stuff like that, that real dark, trap sound.

I love trap music and street music.

I would bump A Tribe Called Quest in my car all day.

For people who love Tribe, I'm the defector. They say, 'You should get back with Ali to do the beats.' But a lot of people don't realize I did all the music in Tribe. In the first three albums, I did all the beats!

I like tinkering with the tribe beat boxes and love using Reason as a beefed up beat box.

I like listening to reggae, hip hop, ragga and R&B when I am skipping.

In the beginning, I wanted to work with Slim Duncan. He actually passed away right around when I started making beats.

I want to make people dance, I want to make people smile, and I want my music to get played in clubs.

I love to dance to Robyn, Nicki Minaj and Boney M.

I love to put on frequency music or binaural beats to keep myself centered. It helps me with mental clarity, and it gives me a moment to breathe and be present.

The Juan McLean is great.

The key is a good story. If you have a good story, you have enough emotional beats that you can hit.