“People don’t really care to be around you when you’re going through tough times.”
― Flying Lotus
“I had a little Walkman, the worst Walkman ever. It was the yellow one, that underwater Walkman. Like you need to take a Walkman under water.”
― Flying Lotus
“Before saying, ‘This track is so dope; it’s gonna go on the album,’ I like to take some time away from it and see how I feel about it in a few months. If it’s gonna get released, I gotta love it – it’s gonna have my name on it forever.”
― Flying Lotus
“Thundercat put me on to George Duke.”
― Flying Lotus
“It’s tough when you’re an artist because you get to go around the world and make a lot of friends, but guess what? One day, all these people that you love are going to die, from DJ Mehdi to DJ Dusk to J Dilla to Austin Peralta to DJ Rashad.”
― Flying Lotus
“I get homesick driving to the grocery store.”
― Flying Lotus
“Death is a reality, and one day I’m not going to be here anymore, and whatever’s next might not be that bad either.”
― Flying Lotus
“I feel like my music has a reputation for being pretty serious or whatnot, but I like having fun.”
― Flying Lotus
“I go through phases when I’m super into my anime stuff.”
― Flying Lotus
“Whenever it gets a little cold in L.A., it gives me an excuse to light my fireplace. You could stare at that joint for, like, a cool two hours. It’s entrancing.”
― Flying Lotus
“All of the Flying Lotus records are exploring similar themes: These questions in my mind about what’s next and what’s beyond.”
― Flying Lotus
“I’m not much of a coffee person, but when I wake up and the sun is shining through the window, I’ll get a lil’ bit of green tea and get to work.”
― Flying Lotus
“I’m so thankful that I had music to turn to in the dark times and be able to understand myself through it.”
― Flying Lotus
“I took to the synthesizer. My cousin had some synthesizers, and I’d always make stuff on those things.”
― Flying Lotus
“I played saxophone for a while when I was a kid.”
― Flying Lotus
“If I have to be ‘the experimental guy’ or whatever, then I’ll roll with it.”
― Flying Lotus
“I’m not the kind of person who’s always out at the club if I don’t have to be. I like chilling. I think that comes across in my music.”
― Flying Lotus
“Thundercat, specifically, is insane. I’m always surprised at the things he comes up with when we’re jamming out together. I gotta try to keep up with him and his ideas, be able to respond without speaking, and come through with some more music. He challenges me to keep it musical and not so computer.”
― Flying Lotus
“I definitely learned to communicate with other musicians better. I used to feel so intimidated by guys who can read notes, like, ‘Oh my God, they’re gonna think I’m not even gonna be able to sit at the table.’ But I’ve come to see that a lot of these musicians don’t know how to read music either, and that made me feel good.”
― Flying Lotus
“I wouldn’t want to get involved with a game that’s a stinker – I can smell one of those a mile away.”
― Flying Lotus
“I know what it’s like listening to Aphex Twin driving down the beach.”
― Flying Lotus
“I’m a geek, man.”
― Flying Lotus
“I had the whole ‘Ghostbusters’ toy set with the firehouse and the car and everything. Sometimes I’d use my grandpa’s camera and make little stop-motion cartoons with those toys – I was definitely a weird kid.”
― Flying Lotus
“I actually really liked the music to the ‘Friday the 13th’ Nintendo game. I still listen to it all the time. I sampled it in a couple records, too. It’s hypnotic and dark but also really pretty.”
― Flying Lotus
“I was a real big fan of Lil Wayne when he first came out.”
― Flying Lotus
“In high school, I was that guy who was trying to be cool with everybody, but I never really had a core group of friends.”
― Flying Lotus
“If I work with Bjork, then I’ll be a happy soul, man.”
― Flying Lotus
“When I was in middle school, that’s when I first started making beats. I was maybe 14, 16, something like that.”
― Flying Lotus
“’Cosmogramma’ is basically the studies that map out the universe and the relations of heaven and hell.”
― Flying Lotus
“I don’t want to do one of those records where it’s like a compilation of a bunch of all sorts of rappers on my beats. I don’t find those to be focused albums.”
― Flying Lotus
“I believe there’s more than this – that maybe, when we die, our brains conjure up some kind of shutdown experience, and that’s what people try to sum up as the afterlife.”
― Flying Lotus
“Reading music has opened up me up so much. I’ve been experimenting for so long and trying to make sense of things just from my ears. It takes forever. Now I can get where I want much quicker.”
― Flying Lotus
“When I got into music, that was another way to be by myself.”
― Flying Lotus
“We’re all trying so hard to be beautiful, but the people in ‘Kuso’ are trying so hard to be disgusting.”
― Flying Lotus
“I do think your environment really plays into how you create. I lived in San Francisco for a bit, and I felt like I lived in the Matrix – so my music had that paranoid-of-the-outside sound to it.”
― Flying Lotus
“If I see a cop, it’s not like, ‘Oh, there’s a cop who’s gonna keep me safe.’ It’s more, ‘There’s a cop who might be having a bad day, so don’t make eye contact.’”
― Flying Lotus
“Sometimes I feel evil!”
― Flying Lotus
“I don’t like to brag about it, but there are people I’ve worked with at the start of their career, and they’ve all become very, very successful.”
― Flying Lotus
“George Clinton is the best storyteller in the world.”
― Flying Lotus
“Before I started Brainfeeder, there were rumblings in our own circle about creating a label for us all. Then I started to see all these other ones from Europe try to capitalise on the scene. It didn’t make sense to me that there were all these people who were trying to build on something that was in our backyard.”
― Flying Lotus
“There are things I’ve seen and experienced in this world – things they don’t talk about in too many books.”
― Flying Lotus
“People are not able to just make music anymore; we have to do things that don’t necessarily make the art any better. But that’s just how it is.”
― Flying Lotus
“I like to stay in the space of creativity, and I want to go towards that all the time.”
― Flying Lotus
“The Internet makes it possible for everyone to collaborate.”
― Flying Lotus
“I’m really grateful for all of the things I’ve had to learn along the way, you know? I don’t know if I would want to say anything to my younger self. That way, you know, it really means something. If you have to go through it all, it really means something.”
― Flying Lotus
“I love Dilla, and who knows where this beat thing would be without him.”
― Flying Lotus
“Dilla could flip a boring record and make you feel like you were flying.”
― Flying Lotus
“Kendrick is a true genius artist.”
― Flying Lotus
“The producer role attracts introverts. Making music on your computer is so appealing to someone who just sits in their room all day.”
― Flying Lotus
“When it comes to art in general now, we’ve become so aware of our influence. We know when people are listening, when people are watching. It’s not healthy. We start creating with that in the background of our mind. I think it’s ruined my mind.”
― Flying Lotus
“With every album that I do, I try to feature a new instrument or sound.”
― Flying Lotus
“I don’t have a great story, but I love Boards of Canada. I didn’t get into it when it was happening; I got into it later on.”
― Flying Lotus
“I feel like part of my journey as a filmmaker is to tell different stories, whether they are just a black perspective on things that aren’t necessarily hood movies, or Tyler Perry movies or Ava DuVernay movies. Love all those people, but that whole thing has been sowed up already.”
― Flying Lotus
“I never leave L.A. for too long. I’m not one of those that go on a tour of the whole world. I probably should be, but I’m not.”
― Flying Lotus
“I found so many reasons to call it ‘You’re Dead!’ – not just because I wanted to make this album about the journey through death. I was watching the music scene that I came up with kind of go stale and watching the lights go out on a lot of my friends.”
― Flying Lotus
“The Soft Machine’s ‘Volume Two’ inspired me heavily. That record just feels like it was all done in the same breath. It’s genius, and it’s silly at times. But I love the fact that every time I listen to it, I listen from the beginning and want to play it out.”
― Flying Lotus
“I don’t sit around listening to beats all day. There’s so many producers, and so much of it is derivative.”
― Flying Lotus
“I’m just a fan of art and culture.”
― Flying Lotus
“I was first inspired to make music by my cousin Oran. He was making music on an old Mac II by himself in his little lab, and I just started taking up after him. He was the first person to put a machine in front of me to work on. He was like my big brother, someone who I looked up to.”
― Flying Lotus
“I love my Fender Rhodes. It’s been a part of my family since that keyboard came out, and I’ve had it reworked so that it’s in the best condition it’s actually ever been in. That is my baby.”
― Flying Lotus
“It’s okay to not be working all the time and to be gentle on yourself when you’re not. When it feels like you’re losing that inspiration – or you’re in a rut, not making stuff, and your head gets all weird – be gentle on yourself. Just ease into things naturally. But you still have to ease into it: you still have to sit in the chair.”
― Flying Lotus
“I wish I could write music notation. Even if I couldn’t play it, I wish I could just write it.”
― Flying Lotus
“I first was introduced to really, I guess, underground electronic music when I was in middle school.”
― Flying Lotus
“When I made ‘1983,’ there were a bunch of tracks that were in the early drafts that didn’t make it because they just sounded like tracks for rappers, and that’s not really the sound I look for when I produce my own albums.”
― Flying Lotus
“A strong concept is the most important thing in creating a record. When you can listen to it and see a whole movie in your head, that’s what separates an instrumental album from a beat tape.”
― Flying Lotus
“It’s the old-school jazz mentality that I connect with the most. I dig the idea of the seeker, the guy who’s always trying to figure out why he is doing music and trying to understand and make sense of his instrument in a world which deals with rigid instruction.”
― Flying Lotus
“Part of what I like to do with Brainfeeder is to get the younger kids hearing jazz, because they don’t know where to go to really hear it. Brainfeeder gives me a platform to put out people like Kamasi Washington or Austin Peralta.”
― Flying Lotus
“I love Snoop – I grew up with his music – but I never thought for a second that we’d work together.”
― Flying Lotus
“I always feel like the past informs my present musically.”
― Flying Lotus
“I grew up in the San Fernando Valley, which doesn’t feel like L.A. It’s a bit different. It’s still L.A. County, but it’s not the same, it’s not the kind of place where they embrace you for being a weirdo. You were just left alone with your Nintendo, and that was my life.”
― Flying Lotus
“I am a big cinema nerd! I’ve absorbed a lot of films.”
― Flying Lotus
“Takashi Miike is definitely one of my top five, you know?”
― Flying Lotus
“I’d love to work with Drake. I got Drake beats.”
― Flying Lotus
“I just understand that I’m supposed to be one of those people that disrupts the flavor a little bit instead of being part of the same sound as everyone else.”
― Flying Lotus
“I like comedy.”
― Flying Lotus
“I’m a silly guy.”
― Flying Lotus
“I’ve been working with Thundercat forever.”
― Flying Lotus
“My music divides people!”
― Flying Lotus
“I like Philip Glass. I think he’s made some really great contributions to his field. I love his style of playing – it’s very loop-style.”
― Flying Lotus
“Childish Gambino – him and I are the same age, and I really like him.”
― Flying Lotus
“I like boring. Boring is cool.”
― Flying Lotus
“I’m the kind of person who needs to be challenged all the time. I need my brain to go, or else I just end up playing video games all day, you know? That’s cool too, I guess, at times.”
― Flying Lotus
“I’m always seeing stuff and imagining scenes in my head when I’m making music.”
― Flying Lotus
“I can’t let darkness be what guides my decisions. I can’t let that be what guides how I treat people. I can’t let that be what drives my art, either.”
― Flying Lotus
“I was 10 years old when the Northridge quake happened, and I lived right in the area, so it was a traumatic thing for me. I’d never had anything like that happen before. It’s always stuck with me.”
― Flying Lotus
“I love ‘Pop Team Epic,’ which is really trippy.”
― Flying Lotus
“My collaborations tend to be pretty organic. It starts off with me being a fan first.”
― Flying Lotus
“Whenever I am making stuff, I got a thing in the back of my mind: ‘Oh, this would be so perfect for’ whoever.”
― Flying Lotus
“I need to help people to create the best work that they can. It’s just something a producer should do anyway.”
― Flying Lotus
“I’ve always been a techie kind of person.”
― Flying Lotus
“I built computers and stuff when I was a teenager and whatever.”
― Flying Lotus
“I decided to play the saxophone because it was the most obvious instrument in my family. There were a lot of saxophone players in my family, and there were extra saxophones, so that was an easy one to pick up. It was fun – it was okay – it just wasn’t me. It didn’t feel like my instrument, so I never followed through.”
― Flying Lotus
“The first beat that I ever made that I thought was actually worth a damn was called ‘Toilet Paper Nostrils,’ and I made it when I had a cold. I had the worst cold ever. And I had toilet-paper nostrils making music, but it was really reflective of how I felt. It was a really sad trumpet sound.”
― Flying Lotus
“Truth be told, I think jazz is a mind-set. It’s not necessarily, like, this guy picked up a horn and did this or whatever.”
― Flying Lotus
“I go through phases where I’m not into jazz as much, and then I’ll get heavy, heavy, heavy into it.”
― Flying Lotus
“For me, being 10 years old and seeing ‘Jurassic Park’ for the first time blew my mind. I want music to feel like that.”
― Flying Lotus
“When I can make music and don’t have to think about anyone else’s ideas or voice – when I’m making something that only I can make – it feels good. It’s nice when you can find a sound that only you can make. No one else can make ‘Cosmogramma.’ No one else can make ‘Until the Quiet Comes.’”
― Flying Lotus
“I remember Usher came up to me at Coachella once, and it’s like, ‘Are you sure you’re talking to the right person? How do you even know what I look like? You’re not supposed to know who I am.’”
― Flying Lotus
“I work a lot.”
― Flying Lotus
“I like when my mind is being stimulated and challenged, and I’m forced to be creative.”
― Flying Lotus
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