Benny Blanco

“I might be eating something, and the bag opens in a cool way, and I'm like, 'I wanna put that in the song.'”

“I can be at my house sitting there making music alone, and every single time I've ever done that the first thing I do when I'm done, no matter if it's 4 in the morning... I literally just pick up my phone and I call someone.”

“My studio's always in my house. I want to wake up and be like, 'You know I'm gonna make music today in my underwear. You know what, I'm gonna be in my pajamas. You know what, I'm actually just gonna stay inside for the next three days so I can make music.'”

“Always be different; don't follow the rules. Don't do what anyone tells you. Don't use the same sounds as people; don't use the same drums as people.”

“In hip hop, it's a lot more about lacing a hot track. I start it, I help mix it, I help write it, I help produce it, I cut the person's vocals. I'm involved from the beginning to the end of a song. I'm not just giving someone a beat, you know?”

“I am still waiting for the day that they say, 'Time's up, Blanco. Back to your shift at Walmart.'”

“I don't listen to the radio, cause I don't have a driver's license. But if I'm in L.A. or somewhere where we have to rent a car, I'll hear my songs. Sometimes I hear them when I'm in stores, and I'm still like a little kid in a candy shop: 'Oh my God, that's my song!' I don't know how that could ever get old.”

“Everything needs to be catchy because a listener is either going to stay with the song or lose interest in the first five seconds. But people also like those songs they can relate to and say, 'Yeah, I went through that.'”

“Most of the time when people work with an artist, they don't give them what they need for the future, they give them what their last album sounded like. So it's like, 'Oh, One Republic needs a song, why don't we send them 10 that sound like 'Apologize?'”

“When you're making music, it's meant to be shared with people. Sometimes, even if I'm writing a song, someone else brings a vibe. There's something different about it. If someone can play a better bassline than me, I'll let them do it. I'm just here to fit in and see where it goes.”

“I actually believe that you should not wash your jeans, ever. In Japan, they actually put them in the freezer. That kills the bacteria and makes them not smell anymore.”

“I used to link up boom boxes, record one take, play it into another boom box then play all that back into the other one until I had six tracks. It was unlistenable!”

“Let's face it, I'm not winning a fight with anybody - unless it's against someone like Larry David.”

“I used to cold call labels and pretend I was one of their artist's attorneys. I'd say, 'This is Jay-Z's attorney, we need to speak with Craig Kallman,' you know, owner of Atlantic, and they'd say, 'Right away,' and then I'd be like, 'Please just listen to my demo tape!'”

“Ke$ha is her art; there is no curtain you peel back to find the real person. And with Ke$ha, you never know what to expect when you're in the studio.”

“I'm not a huge L.A. fan, but I go there for the winter every year. We usually rent a house and have massive house parties.”

“When you're like, 'Yo, we gotta write a hit song, we need a hit song right now,' that never works. Every time that happens, I never write a hit song.”

“I think somewhere along the way I realized, 'O.K., no one's gonna care about a chubby Jewish dude rapping.' I realized I'd be better behind the scenes.”

“Here's the thing... when people start making music, they start borrowing styles from other people, because that's what you do. You start by recreating hip-hop beats you've heard from other people, or you start mimicking other people, or you're just listening to stuff.”

“I let the song come to me. Then that thing comes to you, and you just know what that thing is. Music isn't like a 9-to-5 job. You never know. It's just the most unpredictable thing.”