My influences are vast and varied. I was into classic rock at the same time that I was into hip-hop. It was just that hip-hop was the first music that I got really really into. Rock was right on its tail.

My influences are vast and varied. I was into classic rock at the same time that I was into hip-hop. It was just that hip-hop was the first music that I got really really into. Rock was right on its tail.

...It's an unmeetable level of writing. But even if it's something I feel like I can't ever attain, it doesn't crush my spirit. I figured out early on that you gotta find your own strengths and hone them rather than trying to emulate something that impresses you.

If you're an artist, you do what you do, and in a way, you don't even control the core essence of what you do. You try to mold it and develop a style, but the core elements of what you do are just part of who you are.

I never wanted to start a band to sound like Nirvana.

It's not like changing one word with my lyrics is going to make them more intelligible or relatable. I was always very misunderstood and taken as very pretentious and serious all the time. I would think, "Do you not see there's a lot of tongue-in-cheek and humor here?"

If you're playing a one-minute game, I could squeeze in five to six games before anybody walked by my cubicle. So I got really good at blitz, one-minute chess games. But that's kind of like the cheap chess version.