In terms of content, a lot of rap is crap, with all the sexism and homophobic bullshit. It's incredible how rappers are always preaching nonconformity - you know, "I'm just gonna go my own way and be my own man and blah blah blah" - but they're the first ones to do so many things that they have to do. They have to do that hip-hop thing, a certain way of walking, and it's so conformist.
Nellie McKayI'm just kind of sick of music. I don't know what I want to do. It's not that I feel suicidal or anything, but I just want to end this life. I just want to be somebody else now. Sometimes I feel like that. You always think, "If I just cut my hair really short and dye it brown and put on a little goatee, no one would know it was me, and I could..."
Nellie McKayThe civilised cultures are the most cruel. It's the same with education - often it breeds sadistic forms of cruelty.
Nellie McKayIf you're dissatisfied anywhere, New York is the place to be. If you're unhappy at college in Topeka, I don't know what there is to distract yourself with, you know? So anyway, I distracted myself until I decided that the distraction could be a school in and of itself.
Nellie McKayI was in school for jazz voice, which is the dumbest way to spend $35,000 a year. I just felt like a rip-off of good jazz singers. I didn't feel like I was being anything special, and I always wanted to be special. It's like you know you have something inside you that's gonna make you different than everybody else and make you somebody in this life, but you wish you could figure out what it is, because at most things, you're either mediocre or really, really bad.
Nellie McKay