Music West Quotes & Sayings

I think I'm a whole lot to handle. I definitely am, on every aspect. I'm the video director. I'm the graphics designer. I'm the rapper. I'm the visionary. I'm the music producer. I'm the executive producer. I'm just going to end it off to be poetic: I'm the future of music. — Kanye West

I was ten when I heard the music that ended the first phase of my life and cast me hurtling into a new horizon. Drenched to the skin, I stood on Dunoon's pier peering seawards through diagonal rain, looking for the ferry that would take me home. There, on the everwet west coast of Scotland, I heard it: like sonic scalpels, the sounds of electric guitars sliced through the dreich weather. My body hairs pricked up, each one a willing receiver for the Thunder-God grooves. To my young ears, the sound of these amplified guitars was angelic (although, with hindsight, I don't suppose angels play Gibson guitars at ear-bleeding volume). A voice that suggested vocal chords of polished silver soared alongside razor-sharp overdriven riffs. I knew that I was hearing the future. — Mark Rice

You know, if Michael Jordan can scream at the refs, me as Kanye West, as the Michael Jordan of music, can go and say, 'This is wrong.' — Kanye West

The very first hit factory was T.B. Harms, a Tin Pan Alley publishing company overseen by Max Dreyfus. With staff writers like Jerome Kern, George and Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Richard Rodgers, T.B. Harms was the dominant publisher of popular music in the early twentieth century. Dreyfus called his writers "the boys" and installed pianos for them to compose on around the office on West Twenty-Eighth, the street that gave Tin Pan Alley its name, allegedly for the tinny-sounding pianos passersby heard from the upper-story windows of the row houses. The sheet-music sellers also employed piano players in their street-level stores, who would perform the Top 40 of the 1920s for browsing customers. — John Seabrook

I could never be in a situation with a job where I was not allowed to listen to music all day. I would rather work at a fast food restaurant where I could turn on the radio all day rather than be in a situation where I have to sneak and listen to music. — Kanye West

My idea to bridge the world together with music starting in Asia and going to the West is something that is new, untapped and leading to the future of bringing the worlds together. — Swizz Beatz

In China I told pastors about how, in the West, we have these church buildings and how we go to services each week that last an hour or so. I told them how if we don't like the music or the message then we can go to different buildings and services ... They all broke out into laughter. They thought I was the funniest guy they had ever seen. — Francis Chan

I used to have the Virgin music [stores], and I would go there and just go up the escalator and say to myself, 'I'm soaking in these last moments of anonymity.' I knew I was going to make it this far; I knew that this was going to happen — Kanye West

I buy everything India Arie, just because she's such a positive person, and I just love her music. Her music's so soulful ... I think Kanye West is a genius musically. — Tika Sumpter

I usually think in terms of music. — Shane West

Since I was a kid, I've had an absolute obsession with particular kinds of American music. Mississippi Delta blues of the Thirties, Chicago blues of the Fifties, West Coast music of the mid-Sixties - but I'd never really touched on dark Americana. — Robert Plant

One of the Keith Commandments is that nothing is secret. — Jessica Pallington West

I am the number one human being in music. That means any person that's living or breathing is number two. — Kanye West

I'm just saying stupid, funny things when I'm hanging out on the TV show. When I'm making music I'm in a completely different zone. — Chanel West Coast

Maybe I should go to the concert. I was a sporting-event type of girl, not a loud-music event one. At least that's what I had always thought. But here I was standing in this store, in these clothes, hearing the sound of laughter in the back room, and realizing that maybe there was more to me than I realized. — Kasie West

Unbreakable, would you thought they called me Mr. Glass
Look back on my life like the ghost of Christmas past
Toys R Us where I used to spend that Christmas cash
And I still won't grow up, I'm a grown ass kid
Swear I should be locked up for stupid shit that I did
But I'm a champion, so I turned tragedy to triumph
Make music that's fire, spit my soul through the wire — Kanye West

You must always believe that life is as extraordinary as music says it is. — Rebecca West

My music is rock. I listen to Red Hot Chili Peppers and I listen to one of my songs, and if I don't give you the same emotion, then I go back and re-spit. — Kanye West

People like Howlin' Wolf, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, John Lee Hooker, Nina Simone, Captain Beefheart - all of these artists were what I grew up listening to every day of my life. And there's a very healthy music scene in the west country of England, where I grew up. — P.J. Harvey

One of the things about writing that inspires
and impresses me, is the music words can make. And, like music, the spaces between the notes can mean as much as the notes themselves.
The Jesus Horse — Melinda West Seifert

I feel like too many people on the West Coast, they're too needy. They feel they need Snoop or Game. I never did any tracks with any West Coast artists. Not because I didn't want to, but because I didn't feel like that's what I had to do in order to get on. I just did music. — Tyga

I love Rebel Rebel in Manhattan's West Village for vinyl, but record stores are hard to come by these days. I almost don't even use iTunes. I mostly use music subscription services. But I'll go into Rebel Rebel once a month or so and buy everything I love on vinyl. — Jake Shears

I've always been a fan of Nigerian artist D'banj. He's now signed to Kanye West's Good Music label. — Estelle

I'm the No. 1 artist in the world right now ... I am the No. 1 human being in music. — Kanye West

I liberate minds with my music. That's more important than liberating a few people from apartheid or whatever. — Kanye West

If I was just a fan of music, I would think that I was the number one artist in the world. — Kanye West

Beginning in the sixties, but getting strong during the seventies and eighties, everybody was sort of Miles Davis and Chick Corea and the jazz guys on the west coast and east coast in America, and then in Switzerland and lots of groups in England and elsewhere, like here in Brazil. We were all under a heavy influence of technological gadgets and changes that we used as elements to produce and create music. — Gilberto Gil

For me the top music though has to be Rock or Hip Hop and artists like Kanye West. — Steve Purdy

Suckle was the first West Indian DJ and he had this fantastic source of music. — Georgie Fame

I had a passion and love of learning and wisdom that was inseparable from a love of music and the arts. I've never viewed them in any way as being separable. — Cornel West

Because when you keep on diminishing art and not respecting the craft and smacking people in their face after they deliver monumental feats of music, you're disrespectful to inspiration, and we as musicians have to inspire people who go to work every day, and they listen to that Beyonce album and they feel like it takes them to another place. — Kanye West

African music, though very old, is always being rediscovered in the West. — Miriam Makeba

I stream this radio station, Radio Nova, that's based in Paris. They curate a beautiful set that's really all over the place - they'll play blues or some West African music, then A Tribe Called Quest, then funk from Ethiopia, then James Brown, and then the Beatles. It's an amazing mix. — Zoe Kravitz

I grew up singing Mexican music, and that's based on indigenous Mexican rhythms. Mexican music also has an overlay of West African music, based on huapango drums, and it's kind of like a 6/8 time signature, but it really is a very syncopated 6/8. And that's how I attack vocals. — Linda Ronstadt

..my music isn't just music- its medicine. — Kanye West

The music industry seems scary to me. I mean the film industry is crazy enough so the music industry to me seems like the wild, wild West. Like I would just never dare. — Anna Kendrick

I'm so gifted at findin' what I don't like the most — Kanye West

I grew up on hip-hop. I grew up on Run-D.M.C., Whodini, LL when I was in college, so I'm more of a music fan. I probably have the most eclectic collection of music in my Grand Cherokee. Literally, in a span of a week, I'll go from 2Pac to Boyz II Men to Sister Hazel, right down to West Side Story or the Wiz. I love show tunes. — Stuart Scott

Birds sat on the telegraph wires that spanned the river as the black notes sit on a staff of music. — Rebecca West

Music is part of human life and partakes of the human tragedy. There is much more music in the world than is allowed to change into heard sounds and prove its point. — Rebecca West

All this role model bullshit; you don't have any extra responsibilities because you made some good songs! Your only responsibility is to make good songs. — Kanye West

A little bit South you've got Macon, Georgia - home of the Allman Brothers, the Marshall Tucker Band and Capricorn Records. And off to west you've got Delta blues. Sprinkle Southern gospel over the top of that, and you're talking about where I came from. I loved all of that music. — Travis Tritt

My school music teacher, Al Bennest, introduced me to jazz by playing Louis Armstrong's record of "West End Blues" for me. I found more jazz on the radio, and began looking for records. My paper route money, and later, money I earned working after school in a print shop and a butcher shop went toward buying jazz records. I taught myself the alto saxophone and the drums in order to play in my high school dance band. — Bill Crow

As a man I am flawed, but my music is perfect. — Kanye West

Music is a missionary effort to colonize earth for imperialistic heaven. — Rebecca West

The fire. The odor of burning juniper is the sweetest fragrance on the face of the earth, in my honest judgment; I doubt if all the smoking censers of Dante's paradise could equal it. One breath of juniper smoke, like the perfume of sagebrush after rain, evokes in magical catalysis, like certain music, the space and light and clarity and piercing strangeness of the American West. Long may it burn. — Edward Abbey

... you know what was really messing me up when I got down there to Pittsburgh? Was how young he seemed. He kept asking me things like what did I think of Kanye West's music, and did I think he should hold on to Kevin Garnett in this fantasy basketball league he was in or trade him. And how he wasn't just in this league; he was commissioner of it. Like that was some big mark of distinction: commissioner of make-believe. And I wanted to slam him, one-handed, against the wall, the way he used to do to me, and scream in his face, 'Stop it! Act your age!' ... I didn't do it, though. I wanted to, but I couldn't. 'Honor thy father,' you know what I'm saying? So instead, I grabbed my car keys, got out of there, and took off. It was messing with my head, you know? You get out of there alive, more or less, wait for your father to come see you at the hospital you're stuck at, and when you finally go to see him, he's younger than you are. — Wally Lamb

But black folks have never really been optimists. We've been prisoners of hope, and hope is qualitatively different from optimism in the way that there's a difference between The Blues and Lawrence Welk. The Blues and Jazz have to do with hope while the other is sugarcoated music which has to do with sentimental optimism. — Cornel West

The really good music, whether of the East or of the West, cannot be analyzed. — Albert Einstein

Mozart eliminates the idea of haste from life. His airs could not lag as they make their journey through the listener's attention; they are not the right shape for loitering. But it is as true that they never rush, they are never headlong or helter-skelter, they splash no mud, they raise no dust. — Rebecca West

Love yourself and others, appreciate beauty, art and music, laugh as often as possible, empathize with others' pain so that it may be diminished even if only for a moment, appreciate the flavors and textures of a finely cooked meal, let a cool breeze caress your skin on a warm summer night and drift off to a peaceful sleep. Thank — Cameron West

In the homes of many Western Christians, hours are sometimes spent listening to worldly music. In our homes loud music can also be heard, but it is only to cover the talk about the gospel and the underground work so that neighbors may not overhear it and inform the secret police. How underground Christians rejoice on those rare occasions when they meet a serious Christian from the West! — Richard Wurmbrand

In the American way of life pleasure involves comfort, convenience, and sexual stimulation. Pleasure, so defined, has little to do with the past and views the future as no more than a repetition of a hedonistically driven present. This market morality stigmatizes others as objects for personal pleasure or bodily stimulation. The reduction of individuals to objects of pleasure is especially evident in the culture industries
television, radio, video, music. Like all Americans, African Americans are influenced greatly by the images of comfort. These images contribute to the predominance of the market-inspired way of life over all others and thereby edge out nonmarket values
love, care, service to others
handed down by preceding generations. The predominance of this way of life among those living in poverty-ridden conditions, with a limited capacity to ward of self-contempt and self-hatred, results in the possible triumph of the nihilistic threat in black America. — Cornel West

Several people inspired me like Lil' Wayne, Juvenile, the whole Cash Money camp, the No Limit camp, DMX, Jay-Z, Eminem, LL Cool J, I listened to all type of sh*t. I listened to R&B like Teena Marie, just good music - anybody that made good music. When I was growing up out west I listened to Twista, Do or Die, and Crucial Conflict. They were the "it" artists in Chicago. I wanted to be like them on TV and all of that so that's how it all started. — King Louie

Half asleep and half awake, I became lost in a deep span of my version of a perfect world. A place I wanted so desperately to reach, but would never find except from within the catacombs of my mind.
A place where the sun rose in the west and set in the east, where the mountains bowed to the wind like trees, and the rain sprinkled up from the ground below and onto the clouds above.
A place where no one hurt or lost, or felt any tinge of desperation.
A place where heartbeats were the only words needed, and music floated on the wind like dust.
A place where no place was home. Where a single person could be the only sustenance needed to survive.
A place where there were no yesterdays or todays, only tomorrows. A place for me to find solace, an escape from the real world I was forced to live in. — Katlyn Charlesworth

For me music is central, so when one's talking about poetry, for the most part Plato's talking primarily about words, where I talk about notes, I talk about tone, I talk about timbre, I talk about rhythms. — Cornel West

I spent 80% of my time working on this, and 20% of my time working on music. Why do you think the song 'Niggas in Paris' is called 'Niggas in Paris?' 'Cause niggas was in Paris! — Kanye West

I think as far as the music industry is concerned, it's kind of been the wild, wild West in a way with the Internet, which is not necessarily a bad thing to me. — Queen Latifah

Adele's amazing, I think the world of her and her music and I think Tinie Tempah is cool. To work with someone like Kanye West would be awesome. — Joe Jonas

Every country in the world loved the folklore of the West
the music, the dress, the excitement, everything that was associated with the opening of a new territory. It took everybody out of their own little world. The cowboy lasted a hundred years, created more songs and prose and poetry than any other folk figure. The closest thing was the Japanese samurai. Now, I wonder who'll continue it. — John Wayne

The day was so delightful that I wished one could live slowly as one can play music slowly. — Rebecca West

I had a hard time when I came back to Sweden and started school, because I looked different. And we moved to a really small town on the west coast of Sweden, and there were no brown people around. It didn't really get any better until I started music school at about 10 years old. — Seinabo Sey

Even when I was coming through school, I was a loner and I used to study music and play it and play it, and I was in bands. — Billy West

Look at the darkest hit musicals - Cabaret, West Side Story, Carousel - they are exuberant experiences. They send you out of the theater filled with music. — John Lithgow

Scapegrace: Back then, I was full of ideas, I was going to renovate the whole front of the pub,, and extend out to the west, maybe get in a music system a little dancefloor. In the end, I decided not to. Too expensive, you know. And, like, nobody wanted to dance so.
Skulduggery: Vaurien, if you're trying to kill us, there are quicker ways than telling us your life story
Valkryie: Less painful too. — Derek Landy

Progression is important. I'm always going to play music in the general vein of rock'n'roll, but when I started I was very much associated with the West Coast lo-fi thing and I didn't want to get anchored in with anything that was just in vogue for the time being. — Dee Dee Ramone

The conversation of two people remembering, if the memory is enjoyable to both, rocks on like music or lovemaking. There is a rhythm and a predictability to it that each anticipates and relishes. — Jessamyn West

Great music is in a sense serene; it is certain of the values it asserts. But it is also in terror, because those values are threatened, and it is not certain whether they will triumph in this world, and of course music is a missionary effort to colonise earth for imperialistic heaven. — Rebecca West

American mainstream is obsessed with black creative genius - be it music, walk, style - but at the same time puts a low priority on the black social misery which is the very context out of which that creativity flows. — Cornel West

The light was grainy, dusty; it looked like the Milky Way had spread from the top of the sky all down the west, and the tented shapes of the mountains were huge and satin black against it, and the ridgeline trees made a filigree of onyx. The wind had increased but not cooled; the promise of full summer was in it. And when Dr. Barcroft turned from the west to look again at the house, he was hardly surprised to see that it had begun to turn like a wheel upon a vertical axle as the silhouettes of the dancers raced past window after window. It was as if their dancing, the female slide and shuffle, the masculine drum and thunder, propelled the house behind them; it had become a merry-go-round, turning steadily and stately as the music went just a little bit faster, just a little more, and he could tell there were furies in it, whirlwinds and cyclones and hurricanes that Quigley's fiddle barely held in check, that his calling could barely control. — Fred Chappell

Let's turn to the West, Let's turn up the music, Let's hope it's always as good as this — Chris Pureka

The creatives, they want to connect with people. These artists, the clothing designers, they want to connect with people the same way that music gets to connect with people. But the cost of silk is too expensive. And they won't lower their quality levels. So I can spend $2 million on a record and give it out in a democratic way. They could spend all their time making the greatest dress in the world, and it's just impossible to hand-make that many. — Kanye West

Israel was thinking of warm beer, and muffins, and Wensleydale cheese, and Wallace and Gromit, and the music of Elgar, and the Clash, and the Beatles, and Jarvis Cocker, and the white cliffs of Dover, and Big Bend, and the West End, and Stonehenge, and Alton Towers, and the Last Night of the Proms, and Glastonbury, and William Hogarth, and William Blake, and Just William, and Winston Churchill, and the North Circular Road, and Grodzinski's for coffee, and rubbish, and potholes, and a slice of Stilton and a pickled onion, and George Orwell. And Gloria, of course. He was almost home to Gloria. G-L-O-R-I-A. — Ian Sansom

I gotta new strategy it's called no strategy. And I gotta way to sell more music its called make better music. — Kanye West

Keith Richards on change - "It's gotta go up and down. Otherwise, you won't know the difference. It would be just a bland, straight line, like lookin' at a heart machine. And when that straight line happens, baby, you're dead. — Jessica Pallington West

We can teach about hip-hop history, we can teach about legends, hip-hop theory. It's been around so long that text books can be written about it. This is a perfect time to capitalize on and get kids excited about [music] education. — Kanye West

Music is the very cement that has not just held the black community together but holds black selves together in a fundamental sense. — Cornel West

Profound music leads us beyond language ... to the dark roots of our scream and the celestial heights of our silence. — Cornel West

I'm basically just a normal girl from West London who speaks from her heart and who loves music. — Rita Ora

My favourite piece of architecture is the Royal Conservatory of Music on Bloor (273 Bloor Street West). When they cleaned up the old building a few years back, the stonework just knocked me out. It is a great melding of the Old Toronto and the new. — Andy Barrie

[Brion calls his working relationship with West a natural fit.] His knowledge and understanding of records across the board is great, ... That's the reason why we got along: We don't see music as something that happens in one genre. — Jon Brion

Jay Z in many ways is a rock artist. In the sense that they've used hard rock, punk rock, psychedelic rock aesthetics and influences in their music. When you see Kanye West, he has a full band playing. Jay Z has a full band playing with Marshalls. — Ian Astbury

By the brook she came suddenly upon Rosemary West, who was sitting on the old pine tree. She was on her way home from Ingleside, where she had been giving the girls their music lesson. She had been lingering in Rainbow Valley quite a little time, looking across its white beauty and roaming some by-ways of dream. Judging from the expression of her face, her thoughts were pleasant ones. Perhaps the faint, occasional tinkle from the bells on the Tree Lovers brought the little lurking smile to her lips. Or perhaps it was occasioned by the consciousness that John Meredith seldom failed to spend Monday evening in the gray house on the white wind-swept hill. — L.M. Montgomery

For me, music is in no way ornamental or decorative, it's constitutive of who I am. — Cornel West

It is true you can be successful without [college], but this is a hard world, a real world, and you want every advantage you can have. I would suggest to people to do all that you can. When I dropped out of school, I had worked in the music industry and had checks cut in my name from record labels and had a record deal on the table, and when I wasn't successful and Columbia said, 'We'll call you,' I had to go back and work a telemarketing job, go back to the real world, and that's how life is. Life is hard. Take advantage of your opportunities. — Kanye West

Almost every profession has an outstanding training ground. The military has West Point, music has Juilliard, and the culinary arts has The Institute. — Craig Claiborne

Jazz is really 20th-century fusion music. You take West African harmony and rhythm, mix with European harmony, and boom! — Christian Scott

Shoot for the stars, so if you fall you land on a cloud. — Kanye West

I remember being a teenager and being ashamed of my musical tastes, at least some of them. My Brian Wilson and Beach Boys fandom, which is as important to me as anything else, was almost like a porn stash. Hide that shit, someone's coming! You couldn't look like me and be black in West Philadelphia and love the Beach Boys the way I did. — Ahmir Questlove Thompson

Father
Break my heart for what breaks yours
Give me open hands and open doors
Put your light in my eyes and let me see
That my own little world is not about me — Matthew West

We live in a predatory capitalist society in which everything is for sale. Everybody is for sale, so there is ubiquitous commodification - be it of music, food, people, or parking meters. — Cornel West

I guess every superhero need his theme music. — Kanye West

Let the music defuse all the tension. — Kanye West

Eventually we discovered Bleeker Bob's in the West Village on 118 West Third Street. One time I was there I literally tried to rip the first Iron Maiden album out of the hands of a friend of mine. [...] I was having a tug-of-war with this guy over who was gonna buy it. [...] If I hadn't won, I would've gone home and gotten my shitty little tape recorder that you have to use two fingers to push play and record on, and I would've brought that to my friend's house and held it in front of a speaker to tape the record so I'd have something to listen to until I could find another copy. Yeah, it'd sound terrible but so what? We didn't know anything else. When I hear people say, 'I hate MP3s, they sound like shit,' I'm like, 'Fuck you, you hae no idea, you first-world-problem-having motherfucker. — Scott Ian

I was brought up west southwest coast of Scotland and my mother and father had a music shop, and so I was surrounded by pianos and drums and guitars, and music, of course. — Colin Hay

So when a music artist puts an album out that can only be streamed, not downloaded, what happens? In Kanye West's case, apparently it gets pirated a lot. — Audie Cornish

We -- the industrialized, technologized world -- have never been richer. And yet to an extraordinary extent we in the West continue to inhabit a moral and cultural universe shaped by the hedonistic imperatives and radical ideals of the Sixties. Culturally, morally the world we inhabit is increasingly a trash world: addicted to sensation, besieged everywhere by the cacophonous, mind-numbing din of rock music, saturated with pornography, in thrall to the lowest common denominator wherever questions of taste, manners or intellectual delicacy are concerned. Marwick was right: 'The cultural revolution, in short, had continuous, uninterrupted, and lasting consequences'. — Roger Kimball

There are tons of people in the West who love fiddles, banjos and mandolins. If you got to any cowboy poetry and music gathering those are the instruments they use. It's acoustic music. We don't do that much modern country that has electric guitars and a lot of volume. It's a gentler form of music. It's from the land and comes from the ranchers and farmers. — Michael Martin Murphey

I had an advantage because people would post me on blogs because I had co-signs from Kanye West, Def Jam, and G.O.O.D. Music. Everything I put out, the blogs would put up. When I realized that, I used that to my advantage and helped build my following on my own. — Big Sean

Michael Jordan changed so much in basketball, he took his power to make a difference. It's so much going on in music right now and somebody has to make a difference. — Kanye West