He was an original, an innovator, and his influence will forever live on in our culture. Whether they know it or not, all DJs have been influenced by him. Thank you, DJ AM.
— Clinton Sparks
I'm from Boston - everyone says 'awesome,' but there are a lot of people in Boston who say 'awesome.'
As soon as I would say I'm from Boston, people would just say, 'Naaaah!'
I'm just getting people warmed up a little bit at a time, a little bit at a time, so I can fully come with, like, a 'Fix You' - type record, or 'One' by U2.
People like Busta Rhymes would say, 'Clinton Sparks doesn't do mix tapes; he does albums. He just throws albums out on the street.'
I have a mind that never stops working. As a matter of fact, it torments me.
Everybody kind of always bags on me because I use the word 'awesome' a lot.
I don't have time to celebrate accomplishments. When good things happen, it's great, and obviously I get excited inside. But soon I gotta do something else; I gotta keep doing more stuff. The whole world will never be familiar, so I'm constantly going to be on a quest to get familiar.
I don't even know what made me start wanting to do music. It just... happened. Because I sat in my basement all the time, and music was my best friend, and I just wanted to be a part of it.
Common would come to my house and give me a freestyle verse. I'd make a new beat for it and put it with something else. That's how I met Eminem - he came to my house back when he first started. He gave me a bunch of freestyles, and that's how we built a relationship. Everyone came to my house.
Whenever I try to do something, I figure out what other people aren't doing or how can I do it different or how can I stand out.
To me, racism is so played out and corny and stupid, especially in music, where you now have Nelly doing songs with Tim McGraw, on the hit single 'Over and Over.' Anyone who thinks about that just needs to get a life.
It was just me in my basement honing my skills, hearing songs on the radio and trying to manipulate them and then writing over those, and I started with local artists in Boston, writing records for them.
A lot of times when people become successful, people don't really understand what they had to do or the sacrifices they made to do that, or they assume that they had money. This is coming from, like, a kid who was broke and lived with roaches and a single mom in Dorchester.
I'm always just excited about every opportunity that comes my way.
