Nobody owns me or my music.
— Ziggy Marley
Today, music is great for entertainment, but it is lacking soul; it's lacking substance, and it's difficult to find good stuff. There are too many corporate interests. It's not about the actual music because it's about the corporation, and music just becomes part of a package.
We believe in the almighty and we believe in God and that music is from God and we're inspired by God to give messages and ideas to people.
It's that kind of in-born music thing - I could pick up the guitar and play something. It's not something I consciously do.
I graduated from UC San Diego, wanted to work in film to get my hands-on real experience, did music videos, TV, feature films, all kinds of stuff.
— Ziad Doueiri
What I don't like to hear in music is something has not been thought through: that a sound is just there randomly. I want to make sure that every single little noise that's in my song is there because it's supposed to be there.
— Zedd
Being yourself is what will make you survive through anything. If you make music to please someone, it's the first step in the wrong direction. Always do what you believe in, no matter what people say. Only way to go!
Although my music is electronic, it has a lot of influences from my past, which is all sorts of genres; I've been in a rock-metal band for a long time, and I still feel like, personally, I have a lot of influence from that. My classical influence, you can find spots here and there.
I always take care to have interesting chord progressions, because you can have the best sound design in the club, and you'll kill it in the club, but in five years, kids will have better sound design. But if your music is good, you'll always be able to listen to it, even in 20 or 50 years.
A lot of people want to blow up as a producer, but what helps you blow up as a producer is an artist that matches well with your music. When that artist gets popular and blowing up, and people start knowing them, that's when they start knowing you.
— Zaytoven
The music business, a lot of times, has a big finesse mentality to it.
Music is about feeling.
Trap music, to me, is hustling music.
What's so crazy is I always looked at Jay Z and guys on the caliber of Jay Z like they just the big dogs. I didn't think they listen to my music or even know who I am.
I can do R&B, pop, gospel... whatever genre of music that's out.
Just the instrumentation of the whole 'Beast Mode' made people open up and respect me in a whole other way. With Gucci, I don't use as many instruments. I don't play the piano as much because that's not really the style of music that me and Gucci have built.
I listen to a lot of music... but there still hasn't been a project yet that touches me like 'Beast Mode' has.
Music is one of the most essential things in life. It is what teaches us.
Old music used to mean something. There is none of that today.
I make music that I know that people will enjoy, and balance the ideas and philosophy that we put in music with music that when we play it live, people can move to it and groove to it.
I think my type of personality has all music inside of it, so I am full of music, without even knowing it, without even learning it, without even hearing it.
Those who seek to satisfy the mind of man by hampering it with ceremonies and music and affecting charity and devotion have lost their original nature.
— Zhuangzi
I usually write my music on a piano, and I really enjoy performing that way, because that actually shows how the music was in my mind before it actually became an electronic song.
I've been making music for a long time, since I was very young, but at the same time, I'm still exploring what works for me. I feel like I'm just starting out.
I've always dreamed of having an album. The problem is that it's just very difficult to make an album nowadays because through technology, music shifts so fast, especially electronic music. Once you make five songs, the first one you did is already old and you wished you would have put it out right away. So that's kind of the difficult part.
Music is its own language - if you don't speak it, it's hard to say what you're trying to do.
I'm a church musician. I play gospel music; that's what I do. I never had a chance to produce gospel music, and I did a full album with Lecrae that's the number one Christian album. It's super-big for me.
I feel like I'm an okay piano player. To the music world, to people that's in the hip-hop culture, they probably look at me like, 'Zaytoven the greatest piano player in the world.' I'm okay.
I was listening to Young Jeezy and Shawty Red, and to me, the trap music they had was something special.
It's been a blessing that I can provide for my family just by doing music. I never thought this would ever be my occupation.
When you take your music around to your people in the city or your label, and don't nobody like it, but you really like it, and you like, 'Dang, these folks don't hear what I hear.'
I started producing in California, and they called it mob music. When I moved to Atlanta, the sound was different. People in Atlanta didn't like to rap over West Coast beats. So I had to make adjustments to what was going on in the South.
People looked at me - people still look at me - as 'this is Gucci Mane's producer.' But the music that me and Future put together was so different than what me and Gucci do, it just made people look at the music like, 'Hold on - Zaytoven is the real deal.'
We didn't really expect to achieve anything outside of the UK, and it just went crazy. It's just crazy that people know our music. We're just humbled by it.
— Zayn Malik
I'm not so much into the beats. I'm more into the spiritual side of the music.
Everything, I just wanted to be like my father. And, as I grew within the music, I kind of became myself which was even more like my father, only without me trying though.
The music I do is food... that will be your dinner.
I rented a house, recorded the stuff in a house. Just took my time 'cuz sometimes it's just rush, rush, rush. I just wanna live and play music.
As you grow older, your music begins to mature and grow older along with you.
— Zendaya
I can't just sit down and make a song in a day. It's only possible if you focus on the music and not the sound.
I never feel like I need to make a song that sells 5 million copies; that's not the point of why I make music. It's great if that happens, like it did with 'Clarity,' but my goal is to always make a better track than the last one.
I would never say I will stay in electronic music for the rest of my life. I will always do whatever I feel like at that moment.
Atlanta can do crunk music, it can do snap music, it can do swag music. Atlanta has it all.
Guys like Future and me, we help create and shape the sound of music - not just Atlanta music, but music all over. If you really pay attention to the music being made, a lot of that is very heavily influenced by the stuff that we created. I listen to so many songs that's like, 'Damn, this sounds like my music!'
'Birds of a Feather' is on Netflix, and it did big for me. For me, it was a trial and error thing. I never thought about being an actor. I just felt like, in the music industry now, anything you said can go. So now it's a part of what I do. I make movies now.
If you listen to my early music, I didn't know how to mix. I barely knew how to record for real, and I didn't care.
My formula is not thinking about what I'm doing; it's about still having fun and making music. I don't go into the studio with a thought pattern or certain goals in mind - sometimes I'll start with drums, other times I'll start with the piano - but it's all done spontaneously, so nothing is premeditated, and nothing takes a long time.
When I was cutting hair, I felt like that was my trap. I started selling haircuts. I started selling beats; that's me trapping. So trap music is like hustling music to me.
I think that the sound that the world knows as trap music is the sound that Gucci and I created.
When I actually first moved to Atlanta, I was cutting hair. I was making beats and making music out in the Bay Area. But I came here to make - you know, I had to get my barber license, so I was cutting hair.