Quotes About Music

It's like Liverpool. Everybody went for the music. All the young musicians seemed to gravitate to Asbury Park.

I love Asbury Park. It's like the Liverpool of America.

My dad's also a musician, so jazz was always around the house. When I was 11, I developed an interest in it, and he took me to Leimert Park. At that time, it was the artistic hub of L.A., and it was right in South Central. The first concert I went to, I saw Pharoah Sanders at the World Stage club there, which only holds, like, 30 people.

I wouldn't be as comfortable with who I am if it had not been for Prince. I mean, my label 'Wondaland' would not exist without 'Paisley Park' coming before us.

I used to wake up before school when my mom was already at work. That's where I first heard a lot of music, like All Time Low, Fall Out Boy, Miley Cyrus, Linkin Park.

Whenever I say I made a record in the garage, people just assume that I have, like, a Lear jet parked in there or something. But really there's old luggage, a couple of bikes. It's big enough to put one minivan in. That's it. No dartboard. I'm so not macho.

I listened to classical music. I listened to jazz. I listened to everything. And I started becoming interested in the sounds of jazz. And I went to a concert of Jazz at the Philharmonic when we lived in Omaha, Nebraska, and I saw Charlie Parker play and Billie Holiday sing and Lester Young play, and that did it. I said, 'That's what I want to do.'

I didn't know what the hell Charlie Parker was playing... I just liked the way he played.

I wish I could've been friends with Charlie Parker and played with him. That's my period. I feel real close to the '40s - and actually, I was born in '37, so I was a kid singing on the radio in the '40s. But I always dreamed of going to big cities.

I love guys like Charlie Parker.

Charlie Parker said, 'Jazz comes from who you are, where you've been, what you've done. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn.' It's the same with the revolution.

Currently I'm working with Parker Fly on a new Midi guitar to arrive next year.

I listen to anything anyone gives me. I always go back to a few basic favorites. I can always listen to Django Reinhardt and hear something I haven't heard before. I like to listen to Art Tatum and Coltrane and Charlie Parker. Those are guys who never seem to run out of ideas.

As a very small girl, I listened to Charlie Parker and loved him and Max Roach and people like that.

Don't tell me that Colonel Parker or Brian Epstein didn't tell a little lie from time to time.

Charlie Parker was a genius, as was Lester Young.

I think cool originates with the jazz culture in the '40s. There was probably cool before that, but that's when people started talking about cool - Miles Davis and Charlie Parker and a bunch of other early, cool jazz folk.

I grew up listening to Ravel, Debussy, Bartok and jazz like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Cannonball Adderley, Charlie Christian and Django Reinhart. It was incredibly inspiring! And I was given a guitar and I said 'What the hell is this?!'

I love Walter Mosley and Robert Parker crime novels. And I read a lot of music reviews.

Before now, I've always taken my mixes out to the car and listened to them in the parking lot. I still do that, but more so now I'm listening to it on the Beat box, and I think people should give it at least a listen and check it out and see what it is.

'Tallica Parking Lot' is, basically, roughly about a four-minute animated short which is centered around the parking lot of Metallica, and that can be anywhere in the world.

My first love was basketball, but that wasn't gonna launch me, and I knew I had to get into other things. So me and my friends, we started making mix CDs and going down to South Beach or to the parking lot at Pitbull concerts to spend all night hustling.

I would love to play an H Mart parking lot.

I didn't know why I couldn't sing - all I knew was that it was muscular or mechanical. Then, when I was diagnosed with Parkinson's, I was finally given the reason. I now understand that no one can sing with Parkinson's disease. No matter how hard you try. And in my case, I can't sing a note.