I definitely listened to Lauryn Hill - her's was like the first album I bought myself. Brandy's Never Say Never and Lauryn Hill's The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill were always in rotation for a couple of years.
I think when you're making an album, as the songs are piling up, one of the good things about it is that you will often write the song that you need.
I met The Beatles and Stones at the same time, because Michael Cooper was doing several of their album covers.
When you're on your fifth album, you are going to be judged against all your previous work and expectations.
My first album is like a terrible John Hammond album, with drums.
When you put an album out, you can't do any material from the album if people are paying to see you.
You're not going to hit it every single time, and that's why, when I record an album, I do probably close to 50 songs. Each song I record has to get better. If it's not better than the last song that I made, it'll usually linger for a couple of months, and then it'll be put on the backburner, and then there'll be another song that I do, and then it often doesn't make it on the album.
It's really an orchestral piece featuring a group and it was quite revolutionary at the time and it in fact, it kicked Deep Purple off as a name in Great Britain because it made all the newspapers. Everyone was writing about us. And there was some confusion as to what kind of band we were after that, which is why Deep Purple in Rock is such a hard unbending album of really furious hard heavy rock. Heavy metal hadn't been invented at that point.
If My New Album Isn't Out in 2014, Something is Seriously Wrong!
There is always a bit of pressure to do a good album - to do good work, period. I really put a lot of pressure on myself, more so than other people. But I try not to let that overwhelm me to the point where I can't even do good work. I just put it aside and do the best that I know that I can.
No band on 21st-century radio has mined pre-grunge hair-metal's sleaze like L. A. 's Buckcherry. So it makes poetic sense that they'd spend their sixth album tallying all seven deadly sins.
By 17, I had a whole band that would go in and play. It was called Spontaneous Inventions, after a Bobby McFerrin album.
There were a lot of songs that I still wanted to put on the album but it worked out. I can only fit 18 [tracks] on the album, I would put 30 if I could.
I see songs not as a commodity used up when the album goes off the charts, which is often the case with pop songs. I see them as a body of work. Life should be breathed into them.
When I made Illmatic, I was trying to make the perfect album. It comes from the days of Wild Style. I was trying to make you experience my life. I wanted you to look at hip-hop differently. I wanted you to feel that hip-hop was changing and becoming something more real.
I admire the Pope. I have a lot of respect for anyone who can tour without an album.
I called the album 'The Chemo' because it seems like the industry and music overall is dying slowly.
But thankfully, my first album, Wide Screen, was sort of a critics darling - everyone raved about it, but no one bought it. They only manufactured 10,000 copies; I wasnt even in the running for failure!
If I have a hit, then I hope the people who like the hit song go out and buy my album so they can hear it all.
A dream collage is pictures of your goals. It is like your future photo album.