Quotes About Artistry

I think I have my own sort of distinctive swing, for sure. I think that's something that comes really natural to me, to push against the beat and kind of explore a triplet feel behind everything just to see what that feels like.

As far as working with Kanye and Solange, that was amazing. After 'Swing Lo Magellan', I needed a change. Getting to work in that capacity, writing for other people and working for other people as a writer and as a person who's not representing it as the front person or whatever - it's such a different perspective you can get.

I'm motivated every second by my work; it doesn't switch off. The pictures I make come from every blink of my lashes.

There isn't a switch that I turn on. I'm an actor. This is what I do.

When I'm doing just music all the time, it can get really overwhelming. It's always challenging to switch it up a bit. And just because you're a musician, it doesn't mean that music is your only creative outlet.

I was really serious about painting, so I could never be a Sunday painter. You can't just switch it on and off.

When I was 13, I started writing songs, and it fell into my lap all of a sudden. I wrote poems and journals, but that's when it switched for me to songwriting. That's when I wanted to do everything. It was like a fire all of a sudden. I started coming to Nashville and moved here when I was 15.

Prince, you never knew what to expect from him from one album to the next. Miles Davis was like that. You know, once you get used to one style, boom, he switched it and, you know, switched gears on you. So those artists are very exciting to me, very exciting to follow their path, you know, and their journey.

I've called myself the Pied Piper, I've called myself the Weatherman, I've called myself Kellz, I've called myself a lot of things, changing the name, switching it up, just flipping, remixing. But never to harm anybody. Never to make a deep statement for people to dig into and figure it out.

I've looked at photographs of myself during concerts and it sometimes looks as if I'm in a fencing move, with a guitar in my hands instead of a sword.

I come from theatre and there have been roles where my job was to stand in the corner, with a sword in my hands, for two hours. And I was happy doing that.

I still got bars, I just use 'em differently. I'd say I'm a better singer than I am a rapper at this point because I've been sharpening my sword.

I used to print out lyrics from Nas songs and write my own lyrics in the same syllable count but with different words and different rhymes.

You can approach the guitar like a voice. That's the best way of looking at it. If you are singing, you can't keep going a million miles an hour. You can only fit so many syllables in, so think about what you can sing through your guitar. Players like David Gilmour and Neal Schon are great at that kind of thing.

Shoemakers and tanners form a symbiotic relationship out of necessity. One provides the leather while the other whips it into a glorious creation.

When you think about musicians who are reading music, my contention has always been the energy that you're using deciphering what the symbol is is taking away from the maximum creative energy that you might have had if you understood that it's but a symbol.

I'm not a big fan of trying to be a sex symbol or any of that stuff because I really like the music to speak for itself.

I free-form it, rock n' roll it. I'm a creature of risk, so I don't know how I'm going to explore a Beethoven symphony until I'm doing it.

To me, a song is not finished. To me, there's no such thing as a finished anything. All of Beethoven's nine symphonies, to me, are one. I think of it as having no beginning and no end.

If I weren't the way I am, I shouldn't write my symphonies.

Writing a play, you start with less, so more is demanded of you. It's as if you have to not only write a symphony, but invent the instruments as well.

The first reason for starting to do the symphony concerts was to play this new piece of mine.

If he's a true symphony artist, he knows better than that because he knows that the only truly creative musician is the jazz musician.

We can't afford big symphonies but we commission works that sound rich and symphonic because of the nature of the instrumentation and the people we work with.