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" When you produce an album, you're dealing with it theatrically. It has to have a structure, and the inner response to that is that the ear loves it. "

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" I lost my mother when I was 7 and they put her in a mental hospital. My brother and I watched her being taken away in a strait jacket. That's something you never forget. And my stepmother was like in the movie 'Precious.' I couldn't handle it. So I said to myself, 'I don't have a mother. I don't need one. I'm going to let music be my mother.' "

" I got a scholarship to Seattle University and I was writing arrangements for singers and everybody. But the music course was too dry and I really wanted to get away from home. "

" Everybody, no matter what vocation they're looking at, should add music as an essential to their curriculum. Music can be a very important part of your soul and your growth as a human being. It's so powerful. "

" We spent most of our life almost like street rats just running around the street until we were ten years old. "

" I found this out over the years, that racism is a thinly veiled disguise over economics and money. It really is. "

" I met Ray Charles at 14, and he was 16. But he was like a hundred years older than me. "

" I travel like a maniac. I travel more than anyone I know. I love learning the languages. "

" Working with kids in Soweto in South Africa, it's rough out there. But the bottom line is you've got to go to know. In Cambodia, there are 10,000 landmines. Same in Afghanistan, same in Colombia. I'm totally addicted to traveling. "

" All guys get into music because they love music and they also want to get the girls. "

" Few rappers realize the genre sprang from West African griots through Delta slave songs to jazz poetry and the comedic trash talk of 'the dozens.' "

" When I was 13, I started working in a nightclub with Ray Charles. That's the greatest school in the world, the school of the streets. Ray taught me how to read in Braille. He was only two years older than me, but it was like he was 100 years older. "

" I got in the school band and the school choir. It all hit me like a ton of bricks, everything just came out. I played percussion for a while, and stayed after school forever just tinkering around with different things, the clarinets and the violins. "

" I don't remember feeling love. "

" I was raised in Chicago and I guess that was one of the special breeding grounds for gangsters of all colors. That was the Detroit of the gangster world. The car industry was thugs. "

" I'm just a musician and a record producer. "

" Music in movies is all about dissonance and consonance, tension and release. "

" Every country can be defined through their food, their music and their language. That's the soul of a country. "

" I guess hip-hop has been closer to the pulse of the streets than any music we've had in a long time. It's sociology as well as music, which is in keeping with the tradition of black music in America. "

" I was the most subtle person in the world. "

" I only hope that one day, America will recognize what the rest of the world already has known, that our indigenous music - gospel, blues, jazz and R&B - is the heart and soul of all popular music; and that we cannot afford to let this legacy slip into obscurity, I'm telling you. "

" I've never been bored in my life, man. I've never been bored or lonely. Are you kidding? No way! I'm an orchestrator, a musician, a producer. I love everything. I've studied languages from Farsi to Greek to French, Swedish, Russian... How can you get bored? "

" Imagine what a harmonious world it could be if every single person, both young and old shared a little of what he is good at doing. "

" I hope that on my tombstone it says 'Born 1933, died 2043.' I hope that's my legacy. "

" A great song can make a terrible singer sound good, but a good singer - you put a great song on top of that, you're really in great shape! "

" My father was a carpenter, a very good carpenter. He also worked for the Jones boys. They were not family members, we weren't related at all. They started the policy racket in Chicago, and they had the five and dime store. "

" When I was about five or seven years old my mother was placed in a mental institution and so we were with our father who worked very hard, and we had to figure a lot of things out. "

" Melody is king, and don't you ever forget it. Lyrics appear to be out front, but they're not; they're just an accompanying factor. If they're good, you're really in good shape. Lyrics are written to be rewritten. "

" Seattle is like a global gumbo, a melting pot with all kinds of people - the rich, the poor, white people, some Chinese, Filipino, Jewish and black people - they're all here. "

" I was rapping in 1939. It's old. The roots are complex. And kids don't know. "

" I'm not a psychiatrist. "