"Nâ Hawa is an icon. She's still alive, she's younger than Nina Simone. For me, she's an example because she's one of those artists who started to push the female voice in Malian music. When I watched her videos when she was super famous in the past, I could never imagine that I could live like her. She's got the blues too. She never knew her mum, she passed away when she was giving birth to her. She always sang about tragic things but from her I realised that you can sing about your problems without complaining. She never complains, but she tells you her story. She was like a philosopher. She talks about normal life, how you can love each other, how you can live in peace, even if you've had bad experiences. She's a mum to me, in terms of writing. She always wrote about women, children, society, but with some beautiful melodies."

"It's very strong. This album makes me cry. It's the first album of Toumani's albums that I listened to and I started crying right away. I didn't know why I was crying. I was crying for happiness, I was crying for sadness. I couldn't explain it. I was crying deeply. That's why I always say that music can heal people, because it can take you somewhere you don't control. Many artists can take me to their world and through their world they can take me to my own world, to my past. For me, crying can heal many things. You can process many experiences that you didn't have time to digest. With time, you digest them and you learn how to heal yourself, to be at peace. Listening to good music, music that you like, you can really help yourself, to heal your soul, step by step, day by day. This record is really deep."

"I used to love the Sugarcubes, and then her debut album came out and I thought it was alright, I was going for different things and locked into Suede so wasn't really receptive to it. Then she gradually filtered through to me. Homogenic won out over Vespertine because of a few songs, like 'Jóga'. It's so beautiful, so atmospheric. There are few people that I actually listen to and am not a little disappointed by, or think I could do that. With her, it's, 'Woah.' She's one of those people who make music that I actually marvel at, I really do. She's incredibly talented. For me she's one of the few modern artists who are actually up there with the all-time greats. The music industry has to say that all these people are comparable to so and so, but she really is. Something like Biophilia suits her and suits her music. The music is intelligent for a start, but that really suits her sense of vision."

"The way their styles went back and forth was some sick street shit. Their beats were ill and they had like a slur, a slang style going on that resonated with so many people on the street. When I first heard 'You're A Customer' I was hooked; every single record was so tight and so completely banging. I think they had four or five gold records in a straight row which was such an incredible achievement. They were on some ill roll that just continued. They also listened to the dopest shit too and you could tell that from listening to their music. As well as being influenced by so much themselves, they influenced a lot of people too. Bands like us, Public Enemy, Run-D.M.C were just talking about EPMD so much. Back then, you had to make music that sounded real because if you didn't, people just saw straight through that shit. Most motherfuckers didn't make it but then artists like EPMD showed you how."