"City of God is kinetic and visceral. The active camerawork is gorgeous. City of God really did try to find those moments where we can pause and view these characters without any judgment. No character in City of God is black-and-white. There are moments when, even though we know some of these dudes are ruthless killers, they show us little hints that showcase their youth and make it clear to us that they’re still 16-, 17-, 18-years-old at the end of the day. One scene in particular I remember is Li’l Zé. He was this ruthless overlord, but he gets turned down at that dance party. And you just see his face where he’s smiling at first, and then you just see the embarrassment wash over him. Oh my God! Literally everyone in the world knows that moment; everyone in the world knows what it’s like to get rejected. But considering that we’ve seen this man brutally kill people at this point, I think it’s so interesting how the filmmaker also never intended for you to judge those characters. But he also never wanted to give a romanticized view of their life. He wanted you to fully understand how difficult and horrifying some of those realities can be. City of God is a masterpiece. Really quick though, I also want to take the time, and give a special mention to Ava DuVernay’s work. Ava makes the most culturally important work of our time as a filmmaker. 13th is what taught the entire world that we’re essentially living in a re-engineered version of slavery. Ava is committed to promoting awareness. Outside of her being an extraordinarily talented filmmaker, she makes incredibly formative and culturally impactful work. I just want to shout her out as well."

"Donald Fagen's solo album is another of those albums that kind of teaches you what it is to be a songwriter. I feel like Donald Fagen did Aja for the musicians, and The Nightfly is for the songwriter. It's very much a concentrated idea. I remember getting turned on to this album by my home girl at the time; she was very much a muso. I would spend a lot of time listening to Steely Dan, and I didn't connect the dots – sometimes you don't connect them on your own. I had to be somewhere between 18 and 22 – somewhere in those years – she played me that album and I remember again, whenever I heard somebody create progressional music that are not normal choices, it always would perk my ears up, if it was somebody that would tastefully do something different or make some really outlandish choices, and Donald Fagen is the king of that. The Nightfly is one of those albums that I can't live without, that is where I come from as a songwriter. That again definitively is what created the songwriter in me, as compared to the bass player. The choice of the covers, the jazz covers, they feel like they were his songs, the way that he's playing them on the album – he made them real special. It was like it told his actual story of who he was, and I feel like that's the way you're supposed to play standards, not the part where you just learn it because it's cool. I think that there's some emotional connection that Donald Fagen had to these songs that he chose, along with the ones that he wrote on this album, and you can feel it. You can feel it. You can feel it. The Nightfly is a definitive album for me."

"I got to love this album when I was 18, working in a second hand clothes shop in Glasgow, where one of the guys I worked with played it constantly. It was the first time I had heard music that felt like genuine contemporary protest music. The combination of Chuck D’s informed eloquence and unashamed confrontational stance was so potent. Here was a guy name-checking Martin Luther King and Malcolm X in the same breath as Coltrane and Anthrax. It was revolutionary in every sense. It felt dangerous. These guys had the FBI tapping their phones and were taking on the behemoth of the US establishment. While in retrospect the S1Ws may be the campest paramilitaries in history, the imagery of guerrilla conflict intensified the sense of resisting persecution. Like the best groups, it felt like a gang, too. Flav the joker, Chuck the boss, Terminator-X voiceless, but ever-present. Tight. Then there was the music. That fragmented repetition. Those bursts of brass and breakbeats, squealing like sirens against stolen guitars. Amazing. It didn’t sound like anything else. While Chuck D and his cartoon foil Flavor Flav had the lyrical articulacy, Terminator-X, Professor Griff and the Bomb Squad matched it musically. Their imagination was in context – how to take something from its original context, place it against something else out of context to create something way more powerful than either in isolation. In many ways, I still see this LP as the pinnacle of rap. Of course it is of its time and sonic trends advanced, but for sheer inventiveness and lyricism it has never been matched. It felt like rap was violently booting the world into a better direction – a brief flash of genius before it became mired in the vocabulary of egoism, misogyny and avarice. There have been great pinnacles since, but nothing matches this moment."

"Say what you will, nobody is trying to show off here, it's just solid songwriting. The great thing about almost every song on that record is that you can pick up an acoustic guitar and just play it and sing along. Joe [Elliott] singing the melody, he doesn't sing the highest and his voice doesn't rip up the most, it just sticks to the melody. It's great rock sensibility. The melodies aren't too bluesy, it's just a really solid record, and ten million other people must have thought so too because they bought it. But the interesting thing for me about that record is how honest it sounds, yet how unlike rock bands it was recorded. We took Def Leppard out with us and they told us the story of how their producer Mutt Lange would get them in the studio and the record was totally fabrication, by that I mean they would put down the drum track, then the computers would move the drum track so it really felt in time. Then he would ask Phil or someone to play one note - so instead of chords they'd be doing one note at a time. Then the chords would come from different tracks so you could control it, one note at a time. That record took two years. I've never heard of anybody doing that before or since. You can argue that it makes it sound different or better, but then there are great punk bands that go and bang things out in a day. There are no rules! Led Zeppelin I was recorded in 18 hours. The Beatles' first two records were done in 24 hours. But you can't argue with Mutt Lange's success."