Quotes About Opportunity

Friends of friends had bands in college or in their early 20s and had a moment where they had some kind of interest from a record label or manager. It's always interesting how people handle those decisions and those moments.

When you're 17 and a record label says, 'Hey, do pop,' you listen.

I think the first big chance I ever got was I was one of the opening acts for UTFO and 'Roxanne Roxanne,' that whole thing. And I come on stage, it's like 5000 people in the Oakland convention center, I'd never had a record in my life, I'd never had anything in a record store.

How many people get to say they recorded a song with Dolly Parton and Jennifer Aniston?

'TTM' started off being a feature. A producer wanted me to just hop on the beat, like a Diplo type of thing. When I recorded the song, I liked it a lot, and I figured, instead of them paying me to do this, I'd rather just use this for my project, and we can just get money together.

I started singing by default, I think. Because there was a guy in the group that thought the group wasn't going to ever be anything. And I was getting ready to record, and I'd never recorded my voice. It was always other people that I featured because I thought they did a much better job.

One of the songs we recorded for 'The Long Run' was called 'You're Really High, Aren't You?' Which never really made it onto a record, but later on, it became 'Heavy Metal.' I took that track that wasn't used, and when I was invited to write a song for that movie, I took that track and recorded that song for that movie.

I'm recording another demo for another batch of record labels that we'll shop it around to.

My recording career has luckily run the gamut of recording environments.

I began both auditioning with Pearl Jam and recording for Eleven. In the fall of 1994, I joined Pearl Jam.

I think we were probably playing live for about 12 months before we got a recording deal.

My first recording, a guy came down to Philadelphia and heard me play and he introduced me to Alfred Lion.

Whenever people talk about Don and I recording again, which almost everybody usually mentions, I always say 'Well, there's plenty of things that you haven't heard! Plenty of things out there to discover!'

I should be, right now, a normal 17-year-old sitting in class in high school. Instead, I'm recording, and it's so exciting for me. I can't imagine anything I'd rather be doing right now.

By the age of 17, for me, we had got an recording contract, and, boom, I was gone.

Dre's from Compton, I'm from Brooklyn, and we both wanted to make a better life for ourselves, right? And we both - somehow, we're both recording engineers, that's how we got our break.

I don't know, whenever someone was like, 'Yeah, I'm going to the studio,' I just went with them. And I started recording.

Piper took me one step further in that it got my first real recording contract but the band just didn't quite mature. It didn't break things open, but it got me to the door.

That's what so great about making movies. It's that you get to do stuff you never would be able to do in real life. You get to go to a recording studio, you get to go to Navy ships and fly all over the world for press. And it's just a great job.

I was really close to being this guy who used to be in this band who is still playing and trying to get some recordings together, but I got really lucky.

Private landlords as well as public landlords are free to discriminate against people with criminal records for the rest of their lives. You come out of prison, and where are you expected to go?

Everybody gets to a stage when it's time to move on. I was bored, and the band wasn't going anywhere, so I left. I did a couple of shows on Broadway and some other things. I was busy. I just wasn't making records.

Brooklyn is where I primarily developed. I had an opportunity to make records and perform in clubs here and there, and I started networking with the right people in the right places.

I think it's the opportunity to continue breaking records, either set by other people or by myself. I think that's what pushes me to always make the most of myself and be very demanding on myself.