Quotes About Artistry

I have to work at tunes to get them to come out. Sometimes I'll sit there for four or five hours and get absolutely nothing.

I've written some songs that are pretty scary, but 'Jessica,' 'Ramblin' Man,' and 'Blue Sky' are happy songs. That's the way I wrote them: have-fun tunes to make you feel good.

Some of the kids who discovered me from my 'F.E.A.R.' record or one of the U.N.K.L.E. tunes have said, 'I don't even like the Roses; I love your solo stuff.' I buzz off that.

With great artists like Elvis, sometimes the songs weren't the greatest thing about him. When I tried to perform some of the songs, I noticed some of the tunes weren't all that brilliant, but it was the performance that sold them.

It's important to have good tunes, but words are the thing for me.

Our tunes aren't just sing-along tunes: they're very complex. After a few days of that, you gotta take a break.

I love rearranging and reimagining tunes, so I want my audience to enjoy hearing songs in a new way and make their own discoveries.

From the first album I'm playing bass on a lot of the tunes, and piano on a lot of 'em, and drums, and guitars. I did that on almost every album.

Harpists spend 90 percent of their lives tuning their harps and 10 percent playing out of tune.

I've always been committed to tuning out the trends of drag and doing styles and fashions and performances that are really true to what I love, to the movie references I've always loved, fashion that speaks to me for whatever reason - no matter what people say.

The Beatles had a huge impact on me. I did 'Strawberry Fields Forever', and we worked it out in an open tuning. That's such a beautiful song, and I think I did it in a different way.

I can't tell you how scary it can be for an artist to be in a space where they don't know where the light is at the end of the tunnel.

You kind of wake up in the morning, and you don't see anybody but these actors until you go home at night and pass out and do it again. So it's structured a lot like the process when you're making a film. You just kind of get in that tunnel vision. I like that. I like when the rest of the world kind of quiets.

While I absolutely love a great drummer and get tunnel vision listening to drums at a show, a lot of the time I feel like drum machine-driven music tethers you to a genre.

He's been my number one influence. If you say Tupac didn't influence you, then you don't really need to be rapping because nobody evokes that kind of emotion on a track like Tupac does.

You know, Tupac is very near and dear to my heart. He started my career as an actor.

You know, Tupac would go into the studio and make like six or seven songs in one day. That's how he operated. He was real quick with his pen.

I'm not Tupac or this prophetic dude or anything like that. I just want to make music and have fun.

A lot of people say I tried to emulate Tupac, but when I look back at my career, we're very different artists. I took pages out of Pac's book, of course, and lots of other rappers - Biggie, Nas - of course you take pages out of those books, but you eventually make it your own thing. And I think I did a good job of that.

I was a super-duper Tupac fan, and I realized later, when I became a huge Nas fan and a huge Eminem fan, I was drawn to the storytellers. They all told stories in different ways, but they were all like the best storytellers.

Whatever else anyone says he was, he may have been. But Tupac really was a great American artist. The passage of time allows us to see things as they really are: We see the poetry; we see the personality; we see different sides.

No rapper in the world from Jay-Z to Tupac to Biggie has 100 percent love on everything they do.

My biggest influence is Tupac. He was a poet, and listening to Tupac is what inspired me to start rapping.

You've got a lot of Tupac clones, but I don't think I'm one of them. I just think I give people a little piece of the feeling he gave them.