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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.”

Babatunde Adebimpe

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
Touring is really a weird social experiment, even though everyone thinks it’s a party every day.
BABATUNDE ADEBIMPE

Party Social Thinking
You turn into this desperate dude looking for a shred of attention when you just had so much. It’s like, “I’m just lonely and all I really want is a hug, but I gotta capture that in something real gross.” You start to understand why circus clowns are alcoholics.
BABATUNDE ADEBIMPE

Hug Lonely Real
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 hold in my heart – you don’t think about them as bands; they’re just the soundtrack of your life.
BABATUNDE ADEBIMPE

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

Running Ten Years
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.
BABATUNDE ADEBIMPE

Bullshit Different 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
Painting and animation can be kind of long work. Music was more immediate and more fun.
BABATUNDE ADEBIMPE

Fun Kind Long
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
BABATUNDE ADEBIMPE

Community Groups People
I don’t want my reasons to be informed by what people think about what I’m doing.
BABATUNDE ADEBIMPE

People Thinking Want
I like the model of people getting together to make something when they want to do it and not being dictated to by a cycle.
BABATUNDE ADEBIMPE

People Together Want
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

Attention Numbers People
When I’m in the mode of feeling positive about love, I don’t really feel the need to mark it down in song. In fact, I know what that song would sound like, and I would not subject anybody to that.
BABATUNDE ADEBIMPE

Feelings Song Sound
The feeling of being halfway through a show and just realizing that there’s nothing you can do to save it – it’s a horrible feeling.
BABATUNDE ADEBIMPE

Feelings Horrible Realizing
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

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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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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Popular Authors

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