"I never have, but I would love to pick R. Kelly's brain."
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Quote collection
Mayer Hawthorne quotes (page 2 of 2)
38 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"I make soul music for hip-hop heads. It's music I'd want to sample if I were a rapper."
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"My dad calls me 'Mac' a lot, from 'Mike Tyson's Punch Out' - Little Mac is the main character. I was obsessed. I can still beat Mike Tyson on 'Punch Out.'"
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"Gary Numan had a huge influence on both my music and my style. He had his own unique fashion sense - that futuristic space style. It was out there."
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"Having stuff that fits you perfectly makes the craziest difference. I remember the first times that I was introduced to that - having a shirt that's actually tailored to your body and not just made for your average American. It just changes your life."
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"Hip-hop was my first real love, one that was my own and wasn't my parents' music. Initially, I was inspired by hip-hop fashion. Over the years, I kept the hip-hop sensibility, but make it my own."
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"My grandma Ricky - that's where I got classic look from. She was the most stylish person ever. She had her own clothing store and even her furniture was stylish. I got my "Flashy, but classy" motto from her, too. Whenever she walked in the room, she was always the most stylish person in the room."
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"I'm trying to just drop so much music that people cannot ignore it."
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"I was a hip-hop head. When I really found my own lane in music, it was hip-hop. I wanted to make hip-hop music. And I did, I made a lot of hip-hop music."
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"I was really fortunate growing up to have a broad musical education. My parents listened to all kinds of music, rock, soul, Motown, jazz, Frank Sinatra, everything."
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"I really love rap music. I grew up in the '80s and '90s with Public Enemy, N.W.A., LL Cool J - I'm a hip-hop encyclopedia. But I got kind of frustrated with the chauvinistic side of rap music, the one that makes it hard to write songs about love and relationships."
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"I grew up in the '80s and '90s listening to Public Enemy and Mobb Deep and the Smashing Pumpkins. I don't even know what it was like in the '60s - I wasn't alive then - so the Mayer Hawthorne sound is taking what I can learn from the classics, and blending it with my hip-hop DJ and producer background and punk-rock bands that I played in as a kid."
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"I love doing things that people don't expect."
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"I grew up in Ann Arbor, about 25 miles west of Detroit. And when you grow up in that area, you get a healthy dose of Motown automatically."
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"Barry White is my musical hero. He was the guy who you danced to in the club and then when you took your lady home to the bedroom, you listened to him there, too! That's who I always wanted to be - the guy who was always there."
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"I shopped at J. Crew in high school, I studied computer science. I was a nerd-nerd, now I'm a music-nerd."
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"My intentions with any of my music is to keep it futuristic and updated and be experimental and try new things."
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"A lot of people think I live in a soul bubble."
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