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.
El-PIf you are a good writer you use your life experience to do something different than someone who is 20-years-old can do. That is where you get your power. That is our power as a group. I am not trying to make the same music I made 10 years ago.
El-PI think Trump is indicative of a larger problem. It existed way before him, it is our generation's issue that all over the world people are and have been suffering from despotic power figures who want nothing more to control than help the people they claim to represent. The difference being is a lot of people had not been paying much attention prior because it wasn't directly impacting them.
El-PThe 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.
El-PThere's a segment of this world, there's a mind state that's permeated the intellectual consciousness of this world that comes from a certain type of people that looks at me and you and your average individual as a problem - like a blight on an otherwise potential paradise, something that needs to be cured.
El-P