Mike Shinoda Quotes (13 Quotes)

I respect Jay-Z's retirement. People make a big deal about him getting on records and all this stuff and I don't want to be any kind of fuel to that fire.

It's called Fort Minor instead of my name because there is a bunch of other people involved in the project. But I only wanted to work with family and friends people who I feel are really close to me and we see eye-to-eye. Besides that, Fort has a militant meaning and Minor in music is a smaller, darker, sadder note, so the name is a reflection of the music.

I would have never done this record if I didn't have the blessing of the rest of the guys, ... We're not, like, on hiatus. We're working. We're very serious about our records, and I know the guys are at home right now writing. Hopefully we are looking at next year for a record.

We have people in the band who don't drink or do drugs... some of us like to go sightseeing.

The Jet video with the cartoons in the forest is one of my favorite videos of the last few years, it's just hilarious. So based on that, I know he sets up a good story,

The Fort Minor record is all about getting back to basics in Hip-Hop, both sonically and for me personally, ... And working with Jay-Z again has been phenomenal. We can't wait for people to hear the final product.

Because the Fort Minor record is coming out on Machine Shop, we have complete creative control, ... That's really nice to say we're running the show and whatever we want to do, we do. And be at the point in our career where Machine Shop's parent company, Warner Bros., respects that. So when I want to make a video and say this is how I want to do it, everyone's been cool.

Since this record is coming out on Machine Shop, our label, I could pick anyone I wanted to work on it, so I chose Brad as our AR guy, which is hilarious because ... Brad's not a label guy, he's my friend, ... I've known him since I was like 13 years old and he can come in and say, 'Hey, that song, it's good, but trash this part of it and do this differently,' and I will actually listen to him.

He did a very different video for me, ... It's really clean and there's these crazy light effects. As you're shooting the video, it's like there's nothing there, so you had to imagine what's going to happen. I was very critical. I had to apologize many times for making him go back and change things a lot, but he was a good sport about it and we basically spent an extra two weeks on it. Basically from my face to the album artwork to crazy shapes that fly through the air, they're all transparent, three-dimensional light shapes that flow through the air and carry the song.

But I obviously wouldn't have done the album unless the other guys gave their blessing.

We learned pretty early on in this band that you can't have snobbery in music.

When we started the band, it was because we were waiting for a sound that never happened. We got tired of waiting, and we decided to just do it ourselves.

I'd call it an organic hip-hop style, musically. Back in the late '80s and early '90s, people sampled a lot, and because of that these records had a feel. They weren't recorded in a computer with a click track. . . . When I was approaching this record, what I wanted to do was try and get back to that, but I write music, I play music, so I wanted to write every note, record every note and play every note, and get that kind of hand-played feel.