“I did have a child, and I was reading a lot of picture books to her, but at the same time writing a children’s book was something that I’d been wanting to do for many years, pretty much since the start of my career.”

I don’t watch a lot of other people’s parodies because I don’t want to be unduly influenced.

Until you came along I never dated anyone this low on the food chain.

The irony is of course that my career has lasted a whole lot longer than some of the people I’ve parodied over the years.

I’ve learned how to use my spam filter pretty effectively.

Like, I have had moments, which I think most people have, where you’ll be watching TV, and it’ll be interrupted by some tragic event, and you’ll actually find yourself thinking,

I enjoy all kinds of music. But it is kind of strange when I do parodies, instead of setting up drums and guitar amps.

I’m still a geek on the inside, that’s the important thing.

So I try not to pick songs that I know would drive me crazy.

I’ll bet every great thinker and leader we’ve got Could see all kinds of things other people could not!

There’s a lot of different ways that a song would be a challenge to parody.

It’s very much a “Weird Al” themed issue, so I’d like to think that there’s a lot of “Weird Al” flavor throughout but I think it’d be generous really to call me an editor.

I was abducted by some aliens from space who kind a looked like Jamie Farr.

Some songs are too repetitive for me to be able to fashion a humorous set of lyrics around. Some songs flat-out just don’t work creatively for me.

I have a long-standing history of respecting artists’ wishes.

You can play some schlock like New Kids On the Block.

My velvet Elvis means the world to me. Although he may not be worth much dough, he means more to me than some old Rembrandt or Van Gogh.

Even when I was still a child I cut out pictures of prams from newspapers and imagined the feeling of pushing my own pram through fresh winter snow and seeing the wheels’ tracks behind me in the snow.

Everyone’s been on the “hip-hop is dead” campaign for years, and now it’s the most unsure-of-itself genre ever.

I started freestyling with friends about eight or nine years ago. I started writing also around the same time, but didn’t meet blockhead until about ’94. I started making beats not until about ’96.

Dance constitutes a true recapturing of… freedom and childish play.

People are very adamant about maintaining a certain sound or a certain era, like, “There were three years of rap that were great, so let’s just keep doing that.” The genre itself is just stuck in place. It’s been treading water for a while.

The alleycats manipulate the blocks with gutter magic

If I had interesting things to say, I would have been a speechwriter.

I’ve been able to sell records still. I want to be the guy that stands out there and says thank you personally to everyone. And I try after my shows and kick it because I want to genuinely say thanks.