Sometimes we interview people in relation to music. Sometimes they say things that make us re-evaluate them, ourselves, and/or the world in which we all co-exist. Here are some of the best things people have said to us this year:
Killer Mike on Ferguson
"If you were horrified by the way that people were handled in South Africa during apartheid, or you were horrified by Nazi stop and frisks that your grandparents told you about during the Holocaust, then you need to accept that these tactics are still being used for poor and especially black people right now. And if you aren’t advocating to end that and you aren’t working to push forward the plight to make all people of all kinds—all their human rights honored, then you’re doing a disservice. If you’re not fighting the machine on the behalf of everyone, then you’re allowing it. If you’re only protecting your own personal interest, you are feeding the hate machine."
That Guy Who Broke Into All The Festivals on Breaking Into All The Festivals
"You get kicked out loads. As long as you flip your shirt inside out and take a different approach, you’ll be fine. The gnarliest one was Bonnaroo 2010. I got kicked out on the Sunday, they put me in a farm equipment, hay-bail carrier thing, and drove me out the site. They ended up dropping me about four miles away, in the middle of nowhere, and took off."Read the rest here.
XOV on Going From Fighting Neo-Nazis, to Being the CEO of a Million Dollar Company, to Being on the Hunger Games Soundtrack
“I decided to invest all of the money I had earned from my career to start a record label, because I was so certain I couldn’t go wrong. I started signing people and producers, and building studios. I thought the music business would be like every other business. But it isn’t. It’s a fucking jungle. People in it are crazy. Everything bad, and every trap you could fall into, I fell into during those two years. I got fucked multiple times, sued and stolen from. I lost it all and owed millions. I had nowhere to live, and people chasing me - all the things that come with the bankruptcy. Everyone I signed - songwriters, artists, partners in the company - they were all gone. Gone from the face of the earth.”Read the rest here.
Idris Elba on Skepta's "It Ain't Safe"
"Grime missed me, man. I was in the states when it kicked off. I heard echoes of it, but I never got into. And I have to be honest, I wasn’t too inspired by what I was hearing from grime at the time. Recently though, I feel like it is stepping up and starting to sound more like itself. For the reason that it is totally British, I think it deserves its props. At the same time, some of it aint great. I mean, some of it really isn’t that good. You often get that across rap in general though. This track, the beat is crazy. It sounded like some fucked up Kool Moe Dee shit. It’s very different. The rapping almost didn’t sound like grime to me. It sounded different, like his flow… *Idris starts rapping like Skepta*. I like this video too. It’s so blatantly raw!
She’s really nice. She’s so tall, and she said, “I just want to say, ‘Wildest Moments’ is my everything.” And I did what I always do which is and put on the ugliest toadface and crouch like an old peadophile, put on a faux cockney accent and say, “Ow, fanks. Fanks.”Read the rest here.
Alec Empire on Non-Violent Action
"We had quite a lot of fans writing us from Russia, like gays saying to us look, this is so bad, what should we do? And at that moment, what could you say? But I think one thing is to really make people understand that they can actually take control of a lot more than they often think, because when you’re depressed you think this is all so bad and you get more negative. But growing up in Berlin in the 80s with the war and all that stuff, it looked totally hopeless. So there’s always a better way forward. Sometimes I’m just happy that music can give people that energy, because at the end of the day that’s what you need. You need that feeling of ok, I can at least change my own life."Read the rest here.
Mac Demarco on Potato Salad
"I just think a lot of potato salads are just really badly done. Same goes for macaroni salads. Lotta bad macaroni salads out there."Read the rest here.
Skinny Girl Diet on Music and Feminism in 2014
"Obviously, Emma Watson is doing all her feminist stuff at the moment and it’s such a good thing that she’s using her fame to reach out and encourage equality, but at the end of the day it’s kind of hard to relate to someone at that level. A white, middle-class woman telling us all this stuff and we’re not like that. For me, it’s more accessible to put things into music. It’s an easier way of expressing an opinion or spreading a message as opposed to writing a long rant about it that people are going to get bored of. Anyone can write a long rant, but it’s music that you enjoy and feel strongly about."
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