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There are a lot of spikes that can happen when what you’re doing starts to get attention or people start to talk about it. They can just kind of really do a number on your reasons for making music.

Babatunde Adebimpe

I think that music and art and film, at their best, can connect with something that is eternal in human beings, that might not have so many labels on it, something that’s ultimately universal and that may just be a feeling.
BABATUNDE ADEBIMPE

Art Feelings Thinking
If anybody won life, David Bowie did, at least as a creative entity in the sense of writing yourself into existence and writing yourself out in such a graceful swoop.
BABATUNDE ADEBIMPE

Bowie Creative Writing
No one wanted a job. No one could hold a job. You tend to see those going hand in hand.
BABATUNDE ADEBIMPE

Hands Jobs Wanted
You have to be a really talented writer if you’re trying to encapsulate a news story with a song and have it live after the event. I don’t have the focus to do that, really.
BABATUNDE ADEBIMPE

Focus News Song Stories
A lot of people have reunion things, but I think bands are supposed to break up.
BABATUNDE ADEBIMPE

Band People Thinking
I feel like people just let each other live a little more in New York.
BABATUNDE ADEBIMPE

Littles New York People
Adding instruments to parts of a song and having them somehow find a pocket. That to me was a huge lesson. Like, there’s more than 808s in the universe.
BABATUNDE ADEBIMPE

Lessons Pockets Song
I’ve had terrible, terrible, terrible shows where I just thought, “That was off-key” or I forgot lines or I thought I looked like an idiot, and then you’re leaving and talking to people, and they’re like, “I had the best time of my life! That was amazing!” You just never know.
BABATUNDE ADEBIMPE

Keys People Talking
I was living in a loft with Dave Sitek – this loft full of people just working on their stuff. Some were painting, some were writing. Any plans you had were kind of like a plan for the next two months.
BABATUNDE ADEBIMPE

People Two Writing
I feel like now if you’re going to start a band you have to have an Instagram full of yourself looking a certain way, lined up like five dudes in mugshot alley, hanging out by the bridge or up against the wall, or “We’re in a library for some reason!”
BABATUNDE ADEBIMPE

Bridges Library Wall
The cynicism doesn’t come across in the final; it can be taken as a very sincere plea for someone to not go away.
BABATUNDE ADEBIMPE

Away Final Going Taken
Most of the bands that I really like no longer exist. That might just be because I’m in my thirties or whatever. But I also think it’s the rare band that doesn’t, like, turn into something else.
BABATUNDE ADEBIMPE

Band might Thinking
Ten years is a pretty good run for anything.
BABATUNDE ADEBIMPE

Running Ten Years
Painting and animation can be kind of long work. Music was more immediate and more fun.
BABATUNDE ADEBIMPE

Fun Kind Long
Adam is one of my favourite writers, period. He has such a unique voice and he’s somebody who I admire so much for putting the effort into inventing his own language and furthering it.
BABATUNDE ADEBIMPE

Effort Unique Voice
If you push hard enough you can change. You can take everything you know and round it up, turn it into something else, and keep turning things into something else.
BABATUNDE ADEBIMPE

Enough Knows Turn
It’s insane when someone shows up to your show and is like, “You could run off with me right now!” I’m like, “It’s cool, I think I’m gonna go read.”
BABATUNDE ADEBIMPE

Insane Running Thinking
Regarding race or gender or sexuality, one of the great things about art and music is that they can provide people with very little else in common with a similar entry point for discussion, but the discussions still need to happen for life to get more interesting.
BABATUNDE ADEBIMPE

Art People Race
I probably couldn’t have the same experience listening to that song because I’m self-conscious about some of my singing parts.
BABATUNDE ADEBIMPE

Listening Self Song
I know that being upset without having an avenue to fix anything is a real hard place to be in for too long. But it’s even worse thinking that it’ll go away if you just ignore it.
BABATUNDE ADEBIMPE

Long Real Thinking
My father was a psychiatrist and a social worker but he was a very talented painter and musician and writer on the side.
BABATUNDE ADEBIMPE

Father Musician Side
Hearing that [David] Bowie passed was like you don’t really believe it. It’s as if the sky shifted a little bit, to remind you it was there.
BABATUNDE ADEBIMPE

Believe Littles Sky
Oftentimes, when music is just blasting out it seems like it’s overcompensating for something missing in the song’s structure. When I think of the music that I listen to constantly, it’s never like an assault.
BABATUNDE ADEBIMPE

Missing Song Thinking
You can physically move yourself around but there’s that great line that Adam wrote: “Does it define for life, like print of thumb?” I think it does.
BABATUNDE ADEBIMPE

Doe Moving Thinking
There are people who kind of let you know that you can silence the room.
BABATUNDE ADEBIMPE

People Rooms Silence
I have nothing against people getting their band back together, but the artists I love marked a time in my life, and to merge that time with now can be personally depressing.
BABATUNDE ADEBIMPE

Artist Depressing People
There was something in me, even leaving fifth grade, that hit me and said, “I have to get out of here. I don’t know where, and I don’t know what else I can do but I’m really not going to end up like any of these people.”
BABATUNDE ADEBIMPE

Fifth Grade Leaving People

There are a lot of spikes that can happen when what you’re doing starts to get attention or people start to talk about it. They can just kind of really do a number on your reasons for making music.

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Popular Authors

There are a lot of spikes that can happen when what you’re doing starts to get attention or people start to talk about it. They can just kind of really do a number on your reasons for making music.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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