People have stopped battling in hip hop, in the primitive sense, and the focus of the competitive element has shifted to the music. It's less about bragging and more about being the best lyrically and poetically.
'As Long As I Know I'm Getting Paid' is a satire. Lyrically, I want to be direct. With my history in Fall Out Boy, there's some expectation that I'm going to be lyrically obtuse. But that song is a straight-faced satire of consumerism.
I just don't write musically, but lyrically, yeah I write.
Raucous drunken trumpets and instrumentation tend to guide the way you think. They can give you a path to follow lyrically.
Lyrically I'm supposed to represent, I'm not only the client, I'm the player president
Lyrically we tried to just not be the same as a lot of the other crap that is out there right now.
Lyrically, I feel like there are things I always go back to, having to do with relationships.
I've spent a lot of my early twenties focusing on other people as opposed to myself. Being madly in love with people and putting them first and not necessarily putting myself under a microscope. It's unsettling but I'm trying to be the kind of person that can be alone, at peace with himself. Making most recent album, I felt braver putting stuff into songs than I do bringing them up in conversation. Which makes no logical sense. Lyrically, there was a lot less hiding behind suns and moons and stars.
Lyrically I'm very ironic and silly, but I hope I'll touch your heart
When I wrote a song, it would have to be from something I was really excited about, or a melody that's been haunting me for weeks, or a message I wanted to convey lyrically. So it would have to start from something I felt very strongly about.
There isn't much of an agenda lyrically. And I definitely didn't want to write about things I don't know anything about.
My goal every time I make a record is just to make the funkiest, the best music I could possibly make, both lyrically, and music-wise.
I'm as good as anybody out there lyrically and conceptually and can go toe to toe with the best of them throughout history.
I'm always thinking about songs, I'm thinking of life maybe a little bit more lyrically than a computer programmer or someone like that.
Lyrically, I personally lean towards venting.
Lyrically, 'less words mean more' is a pretty good rule of thumb. Try to cut out the fat and get to the meat of what you're saying.
For one, the nonverbal aspects of music are the most important to me. Then, whatever sort of emotion the music carries, intrinsically, dictates the images that unfold, lyrically. Topical writers usually have the topic before they begin writing the song, but, for me, it's the other way around.
I have learned to be steady in my course of love, or fear, or loneliness, rather than impulsive in its wasting, either lyrically or emotionally.
I like to challenge myself, to see if I can actually write a pop album that people can connect with lyrically. Musically, it's very accessible - or, at least, I hope so.
I would feel really dishonest writing a song that was really sassy, or really confident, because I'm not a supremely confident being. I think that's what people find interesting about what I do; it's very different lyrically.
