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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.

Babatunde Adebimpe

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

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

Running Ten Years
There are people who kind of let you know that you can silence the room.
BABATUNDE ADEBIMPE

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

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

Littles New York 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
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
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
Painting and animation can be kind of long work. Music was more immediate and more fun.
BABATUNDE ADEBIMPE

Fun Kind Long
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
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
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
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

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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