I would agree with you that there's 90% imitation and 10% innovation. That's true of any genre.

I realized that people don't quite understand what I do when I was the new kid on the block and a lot of Hollywood was offering me fairly cheesy projects.

I couldn't make a real drum'n'bass or dubstep record to save my life. But I can be influenced by them in small ways.

If I wanted to contribute to the hyphy movement, what good is it making a hyphy record that isn't embraced by that community?

I think one of the things about ageing is the jagged peaks become a little bit mellower...? Heheh. And I feel like I'm able to understand a little bit better where that sort of tack comes from.

Sometimes there's this balance: if you try to clear 10 things you'll probably get lucky and be able to clear most of them, or all of them; try to clear 20 things, in my mind there's gonna be at least one issue, maybe two - and then that's when it starts getting into either re-recording stuff, or you've got to take that song off.

I think a band - even a band that's been around as long as the Rolling Stones - I think that's still the formula. You know you're gonna get those songs, and you don't mind sitting through the ones that you maybe don't know very well because you know they're not gonna let you down - they're not gonna mess with you. And I kind of feel the same way about the way I structure my shows.