I think that everyone who does music, and everyone who does art, or everyone who decides at a young age that they're gonna do that, is someone who feels like an outsider. The world is not really set up for that.

Just when you think you should start accepting that you're becoming an adult, all your childhood fantasies come true.

My relationship to Brooklyn is probably the relationship that any 40-year-old man has to his hometown, which is that this is where I live, this what I know, yet it's different, it's changed. My fascination with the city has maybe subsided and now it's just where I'm from, where I live.

I wanted people to know that I was making what I was making just on a sampler, basically.

The only thing an artist is useful for, and the only reason why we don't just line 'em up against the wall and shoot them, is because, at their best, they're the reflection of our lives, that most regular people can't even afford to think about.

I would feel pretty embarrassed if I was doing what I do and I wasn't at least attempting the eloquent translation of the human experience in some way.

Everyone just wants to feel good, and I don't think that all music is designed to make you feel good. Sometimes it's to make you feel amped, or angry, or nervous. I was listening to a lot of Public Enemy when I made the record.