Macklemore

'The more expensive the better' is kind of the American way, and if you spent $600 for a sweatshirt, then that makes it better.

Reading a piece of poetry with no beat in front of 20 people is way more challenging than rocking for 10,000 people.

I find that when I put my spiritual life first, the rest of my life is easy. When I put my career first, that's when I have problems.

I played baseball up until my freshman year of high school. That was my main sport. I played third base.

I think that there will always be artists out there who think they need to sign a major label deal in order to be successful. And that machine is what is going to work for them - there's tons of examples of pop stars who need that machine.

I think what's wrong with the fashion world, particularly men's fashion, is the lack of creativity behind it.

You need to get outside of your comfort zone to write songs that are interesting, songs that are compelling, songs that are different from what other people are writing.

I'm a very conceptual writer.

Consciousness rap - a term that I don't think exactly exists but gets thrown around a lot - is not exactly popular.

I don't write a great song every day. I don't write a great song every couple weeks. It comes in such random times.

I think that civil rights issues take a lot of time to develop.

I'm not more or less conscious than any other rapper out there.

I definitely use 'smiling while rapping' as a tool in the booth. I want to have fun while recording.

When you mess up publicly, it can be difficult to get vulnerable again or to put yourself out there.

The amazing thing about being a dad is to be able to look at your child and realize that the universe is so much bigger than you.

The reason why I meditate and pray in general is just to remind myself that it is not about me.

It's weird because music is this thing that you love doing, and it comes completely from a place of creativity, and then that transfers into having to manage a business and make decisions and figure out what is the best route to go in terms of getting your product to as many people as possible.

The man that got me into collecting sneakers in the first place was the man they call Michael Jordan. He was the one who kind of exposed me to the sneaker world - he was my favorite basketball player, and he had the best shoes.

I don't feel like I'm grown up. I feel like I'm a kid.

The question is, What type of human do I want to be? How do I want to use my platform? Do I want to be safe, under the umbrella of my white privilege? Or do I want to push back and resist?

It's easier, as a white person, to be silent about racial injustice. It's easier. On paper. But it's not easier on the whole, because injustice affects all of us, whether we know it or not, whether we acknowledge it or not.

I think that, as a white person stepping into doing any sort of anti-systematic-racism type of work, asking yourself, 'What is your intention?' needs to happen on a consistent basis. Check yourself. Check yourself. Check yourself, like, constantly.

There's this tendency to be like, 'Where's the negative stuff? How valid is the criticism?' But honestly, what people think of me is none of my business. If I live on the Internet looking for public approval, I'm going to be miserable.

We have to tell people who need help that it's OK to ask for it.

My partner has to have good sized bones.