I don't have any sympathy for the subject matter, [but] I have great respect for rap artists. In fact, not for the rap artists, but the people who make the music over which they rap. Rap music - the music itself is incredible - but [the people that make the music] are hardly ever credited.

I studied music for my first two years in college. When I went to UC Berkeley, I failed the admission requirements to get into the music school there, so I studied communications and public policy, which actually were a greater engine for my career than a musical education would have been. If I had gotten into the music department at Berkeley, I'd probably be a timpanist in an orchestra right now.

In a film score, the last thing you want to do is take people out of the movie. The music is secondary. In opera, the music is the main event.

Drummers shouldn't just think of themselves as drummers. If you're going to be a musician, you should expand your horizons, compose things, and work with other instruments.

That whole thing of replicating what others do is a siren call. The sirens lure you to the rocks of unoriginality.

Don't believe everything you see on VH1.

Music has an immediate effect. If you want to go beyond that and look underneath, film is a good way of explaining.