"That is the album. It’s got all the songs on there that I love. You know, like ‘High Plains Drifter.’ That was an era of Beastie Boys that was between where they were like frat-partying animals and were like, ‘Whoa, hold up. We can really be artists with this rap thing.’ I think they were on the first album, obviously it was a breakthrough. I think this was their statement album—their first statement album of many. I am a huge fan. “To be honest, I could have gone with Check Your Head or Ill Communication since those were more my era of when I was deep in music. I think I stole my brother’s Licensed To Ill tape. The first one I bought on my own was Check Your Head. After I got that I was like, 'Oh, this is the shit.' I went back to go buy Paul's Boutique. And Paul’s Boutique, along with the other few albums I chose, just sounded like it was from another planet. It existed always. There was nothing wrong with it. The voicemail, outgoing message about Paul’s Boutique: 'We are here in Brooklyn.' It was like, this is for real, I could go there. I could call that number. It just seemed, like, magical."

"An incredible record that sounds as modern today as it did when it first emerged. I was really struck just by this minimalist production and the atmosphere they captured on this record. It's just been one of these records that I go back to over and over again and it's been a real touchstone in my career. I just think it's so beautiful and so tastefully constructed. Again, it's also so unique. There's nobody else who has ever touched them. 

 They've made this insanely perfect record – and I rarely say that, that it is a perfect record – and I associate it with the emergence of myself as an adult where it just felt like a whole different universe than what I had experienced before. It sounded like a whole different planet. 

 I don't even know how to articulate why I love it so much, other than it is a perfect recording. I guess the aesthetic of Colossal Youth is that it is so disciplined. You don't really hear that very often, that real confidence just to let things be really simple and unembellished: it takes a lot of balls to do that [laughs]. I feel too that any new generation that was exposed to that record would find it as thrilling as I did back in the 1980s; you can't really say that about too many records."

"Raging Bull. I defy anybody to point out one thing that’s wrong with it. It’s just perfect. There’s nothing in that movie that could be cut out that would make it better. It just feels so lean and perfect. Every moment doesn’t lose sight of what it’s about, you know? Every shot is animal. It’s amazing. Although I think it’s really hard to do jealousy, because jealousy’s a bit like seasickness in that it’s awful if it’s happening to you but f—ing funny to watch. You know, somebody puking off the side of a boat or somebody being jealous, you look like such a moron, but if it’s happening to you, and you’re jealous, it’s f—ing appalling. Somehow, in that movie, what it pulls off is, it’s never funny. It’s just f—ing awful, he’s just an animal, and it’s the threat of violence the whole time. It’s amazing and beautiful."

"I’d put The Fellowship of the Ring in there. I just think Peter Jackson did a fantastic job with the movie, and I loved those books. It’s one of those things where, reading the books, and getting so excited about them, and just praying that the movie did it justice. And it totally did, to me. Plus, the relationship between Frodo and Sam, and Gollum, and all of that. I loved it. I’m also a huge fan of The Chronicles of Narnia, and I had the opposite experience with that, where it just didn’t click like it did with The Lord of the Rings. So I just loved what Peter Jackson did with that."

"You know, what’s touched me I think is GoodFellas… It’s a very real movie. GoodFellas is really some deep stuff. It was very good. It was believable. It just felt like Queens. I don’t know if a lot of that movie was filmed in Queens, but it felt like something that was happening in my backyard that I didn’t really know about. So it’s almost like a history lesson. The acting is so good. I’ve said that a couple of times, but that’s my truth. When he came out with the gun and beats the kid up for messing with his sister, the kid was like, “You got something to say to m–,” and before he could say the word “me,” he was beat up. That’s the scene for me. It was very real to me that guys would do that for their family. People just want to be successful in life. They all want to be happy. And some people go about it in a way that’s pretty destructive, but in that scene, you could see how much he loved his family."

"I was quite a late-comer to Moodyman's music. I didn't really hear it when it was new to other people. Joe recommended Mahogany Brown to me. When I was in Germany on tour I brought a white label that had the track 'Pray 4 Love' on it that's on the Picture This album. I just fell in love with the sound - the Fender Rhodes and that kind of swung, half-time rhythm that is quite slow to this sort of disco groove, and it keeps going back and forth between those two rhythms, and being quite natural in the way that it does it. It suggests that it's going to explode into something, and then it just drops down into half-speed. It's a very teasing record in the same way that 'Shades Of Jae' by him was. He really understands the dancefloor, and a record that replicates sexual build-up. It's a very sensual and playful record. That in itself is a bit like Prince, but it's all sample-based stuff, and then the vocals as far as I can tell. Sometimes I'm playing in clubs where the expectation is that you'll just play very digital and harsh, abrasive music. I don't really like being known as an electronic artist because I don't think of myself like that. I like everything, predominantly soul music and music that is soulful, rather than just from the soul genre. Moodymann's inspiring because of his approach to production, and he's very inventive."

"Probably my favorite role of all time was Heath Ledger as the Joker in The Dark Knight. That’s one of my favorites to this day. Just watching his performance in that is like… It never gets old to me. Sometimes I’ll just watch the movie, and I’ll fast forward, and I know exactly where his scenes are, and I’ll just fast forward to every scene and just watch them. So that’s another one."

"I feel like that’s going to be a common one on a lot of these people’s list, but for me it’s just about the coolest movie I ever saw. When I saw it I was like, “That is so cool.” I don’t know if that was Charlie Kaufman’s intention, but I love that it was the real John Malkovich. I think that’s where I started to be kind of excessive with pulling back the fourth wall a little bit. Although, that might be a recurring theme with my movies, now that I’m thinking about it."