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" We've played so many places where, if you asked people, 'Do you like jazz?' they would be like, 'Not at all.' But I think that if you're really putting yourself out there and really communicating, music can put you beyond people's preconceptions, beyond their playlist. "

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" We do have the power to kind of make this world what we want it to be. But we have to just choose to do it ourselves and not wait for someone else. "

Kamasi Washington

Someone

Choose

Power

" The thing about hip-hop is, like, that the instruments were taken out of schools. But - you might have taken the instruments out of schools, but we'll take the records and sing over them! "

" Hip-hop and jazz have always been intertwined. Even the G-funk thing. You listen to 'The Chronic,' there's flute solos and everything. It's always been there. "

" Every time you learn a new language, your understanding of language overall grows, so every time I would learn new music, my understanding of music would grow because I was taken to an extreme in a different direction, and that was, in effect, carrying over into what I do. "

" At the time of 'The Epic,' as a core band, we were all spending so much time apart making music for other people that by the time we got together - even though we grew up together and there's a special connection we have - it was like a rare privilege to come together. "

" We started 'Heaven And Earth' in 2016. That was probably the heaviest touring year of my whole life. We probably did almost 200 shows in 2016. We went into the studio, and I honestly didn't know what the album was going to be. So I just kind of started picking songs that I liked. "

" The musicians I really looked up to as a kid were the ones who could play everything. "

" As musicians, we have one of the greatest tools of bringing people together in music. "

" Jazz is like a telescope, and a lot of other music is like a microscope. "

Kamasi Washington

Microscope

Music

" Malcolm X's separatist ideas were situational. If you think about where African-Americans were in the 1940s and 1950s, we needed to step away because that force, which is still present but more subdued, was very in your face, and we needed to take a step back just to get some clarity. "

" In a lot of ways, I feel like I'm just taking the music that comes to me and trying to make it as beautiful as I can. You can't really predict or control how people will receive that music. "

" Music doesn't come out of you, it comes through you. You are almost like a messenger. "

Kamasi Washington

Out

Music

" When I was working on 'To Pimp A Butterfly' and 'DAMN.,' I'm really making music for Kendrick. It's a different mindset than when I'm making music for me. I'm trying to get into his head and figure out what he wants because it's his vision. That's what I expect from people when they're playing on my records. "

Kamasi Washington

Music

People

" Jazz is a part of me. "

Kamasi Washington

Part

Jazz

" I used to tell my friends, 'Art Blakey is way more gangster than Eazy-E!' I ended up getting my friends into jazz, and all of a sudden there was this little group of kids in the middle of South Central that were all into hard-bop. "

" By the time I was about 15, I was out playing gigs and knew I was going to be a musician. "

" Gerald Wilson was one of my mentors: he was in his nineties before he passed and, literally, every time I saw him, he'd be like, 'Man, Kamasi, I've got this new thing! Nobody ever heard anything like this before!' It's amazing hanging out with somebody that was born in 1918. "

" I can't really worry about nuclear war any more than I can worry about the aliens coming. "

Kamasi Washington

Worry

I Can

" When I was younger... we used to go to this place called Rexall to play 'Street Fighter.' At Rexall, there would be different people from different hoods there playing the game. It was the one place that was like an equalizer. It was just about how good you were at 'Street Fighter.' "

" Hip-hop is a collage. It samples from all different styles of music. "

" When I was younger, I'd be walking down the street and suddenly panic because I had a cool idea and no way of getting it down - I'd have to sing it all the way home. Now I can hum it into my phone. "

" This precious thing of empathy and love and understanding is something we have to hold and appreciate and protect. "

" I never had a problem moving between jazz and hip-hop. "

" I started playing with this band, the Polyester Players. It was my introduction into funk. So I went and got a James Brown record. 'Black Caesar' is a film score, but it's so dope. "

" Fela Kuti blew my mind. His playing is very unorthodox, but I learned how to appreciate that. "

" L.A. has always been hated on so much. I remember, the first time I went to New York, I was at jam sessions, and people would hear me and come up to me and be like, 'Oh wow, you're from L.A.? Really?' "

Kamasi Washington

People

New York

" My dad was really into avant garde jazz: Archie Shepp, John Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders. "

" Music is this medium to express who I am and what I've been through and my thoughts and what my feelings on the world are. We're all on the planet together; I'm just using this medium to express how I see it. "

" I think the open mind is the one that's reachable. "

" There's a deeper level of healing that needs to happen for the world in general. There's a mass of people who are broken. "