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 ADEBIMPEI 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.
More Babatunde Adebimpe Quotes
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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.
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There are people who kind of let you know that you can silence the room.
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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.
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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.
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My father was a psychiatrist and a social worker but he was a very talented painter and musician and writer on the side.
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Most of the bands that I really hold in my heart – you don’t think about them as bands; they’re just the soundtrack of your life.
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I feel like people just let each other live a little more in New York.
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Being 15 and like a punk in the DIY community, basically being with a group of people like no one else, it was the first place to exclude or call out if people were racist, sexist, homophobic or in any way prejudiced.
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I want to be around these positive, expressive people who are doing something different and who also want to get the hell out of there and don’t want to be around basic human bullshit.
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A lot of people have reunion things, but I think bands are supposed to break up.
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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.
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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!”
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One second you’re having the time of your life in front of all these people, and then you come backstage to the exact opposite – there’s only lukewarm carrots back there.
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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.
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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