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 ADEBIMPETen years is a pretty good run for anything.
More Babatunde Adebimpe Quotes
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There are people who kind of let you know that you can silence the room.
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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.”
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Painting and animation can be kind of long work. Music was more immediate and more fun.
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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.”
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I feel like people just let each other live a little more in New York.
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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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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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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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The cynicism doesn’t come across in the final; it can be taken as a very sincere plea for someone to not go away.
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I don’t want my reasons to be informed by what people think about what I’m doing.
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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.
BABATUNDE ADEBIMPE






