Quotes About Expression

My biggest influence is rap. It spoke to me, probably because of my upbringing in Christiania. You listen to 'The Chronic' and you can hear that anger and frustration.

A big part of my upbringing was being with an instrument and kind of figuring myself out through music. So I feel a strong desire in any way that I can to help do that for other kids.

Everyone's personal style evolves based on upbringing, exposure, influences, personality, etc. Style is subjective.

I, forever a product of my Scottish Calvinist upbringing, never knew how to react when someone smilingly took both my hands and told me 'Jesus loves you, and we love you.' I'd just grin rigidly, and urgently will it to stop.

What I always say to people is dress from the feet up. If you don't normally wear colour, try some colour on your feet; it's the place, I think you can have fun and update your outfit.

I tried to draw people more realistically, but the figure I neglected to update was myself.

I've always been very upfront about the way I write, and I've always used the tools humorists use, such as exaggeration.

It's not just the kid who's spent every penny from his job to upgrade his car to tell the world he cares about sports cars, it's also the person driving around in a fuel-conscious hybrid electric car, because it's more a message to the world than an effective means of saving fuel, to be quite honest.

Even before I came out, looking at me, I've probably looked a little gay. I had short hair, and, you know, it wasn't a huge surprise to people. But some athletes have this image to uphold and may feel like sponsors won't want them if they're gay.

Hip-hop is supposed to uplift and create, to educate people on a larger level and to make a change.

Fashion should have a transgressive nature; it can make you feel like someone else, give you heightened emotion. It should bring you joy and uplift you.

I'm making music that I love and I want to hear. At the same time, things like making money, making crazy money - you gotta find ways to reach to everybody but uplift everybody.

I personally wouldn't want my second album to sound like my first; it might sound very rocky or hard rock - and that wouldn't be melancholy. So if people think my music is melancholic, then so be it. It's meant to be uplifting, and I'm just basically saying what needs to be said.

I write really scathing, angry stuff when I'm in a better mood, and then uplifting and happy stuff when I'm at the absolute bottom.

My goal is really to continue to make music. I really don't make music to have platinum records and all that kind of stuff. I've been there. I do it because I love music, and I love uplifting people through my music. That's my real goal.

Music should be truthful and real, but it should also be healing and uplifting.

The snappier lyrics come when I'm feeling really good and up. A lot of times, they come after I've just had a meeting with somebody that was uplifting, and you get home, and you're feeling playful or upbeat or whatever, and then they just seem to pop right out.

Music is an extremely powerful force if used properly to uplift people. I believe music should be uplifting and not downgrading... it's a very, very powerful tool.

I find the ones that have the most emotional weight, the heaviest songs. For some reason, for me, they're usually the ones I write the quickest. I put more work into uplifting material, I think, sometimes.

There is something about the art form and about drag entertainers that is very uplifting.

The trick of Afrobeats is it doesn't just move your upper body, it moves your hips as well, and I think that's what people have been missing in popular music for a while. I think that's what people need around the world.

I'm extremely hairy. It pretty much connects from the top of my head to my toes with a nice upper body sweater/track jacket type of thing.

I was brought up in a fairly emotionally repressed kind of society in Northeast England where one didn't express emotions and was expected to keep a stiff upper lip.

The tattoos on my legs started because they didn't let me get tattoos on my upper body at work. They would never clear me for anything.