The key moments in your life are when you realize how exciting music can be, like when you hear Nevermind for the first time. I grew up in the '70s and '80s. I was introduced to hip-hop when it first came out. Hip-hop music will always be my first love. That's why I love playing the drums. Any day of the week, I would rather listen to a hip-hop album than a rock album.

When you listen to the music, you see little movies in your head, and that's the beauty of it, I think. People can make up their own stories. They don't necessarily have to know exactly what each song is about. It's their way of interpreting of interpreting different feelings or emotions.

Photography and movies are a much bigger influence on me than music is itself.

All the songs are written from the perspective of a person, being me, who had trouble with some of the big questions in life, like, are we meant to be together with the same person for the rest of our lives? Or, is it frowned upon if a man goes through many women at all times? What is the meaning of love versus sex? It's just a lot of big questions, I guess, that are really difficult to answer. People see it very differently, but people sometimes suppress their lust. And it's not only sex. It could be lusting for anything that's supposedly very bad for you but can be good for you, too.

If you want to do a movie about aliens coming down to Earth nowadays, you need to do it with a smile.

I don't really watch too many remakes. I saw Scorsese's version of Cape Fear, which was good. That was a good remake.

Once I have something that I think I can work with, then I'll go in and make it on the computer. I'll try to recapture the sound that I had in my head when I was thinking about it. That's usually how I do it.