"Well, obviously, I would have to say my dad’s movie, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song is one of them, for sure. You know, I was lucky in that case not only to see the film and see the first movie where an overtly empowered black power character goes up against the system and survives. That was the first of its kind. But also to see my father insist on working with a multiracial crew. He had women on it, he had hippies on it, Hispanics, Asians, you know, and really bring all these folks together. That was super inspiring, to see that you could take sort of a multiracial, sometimes ragtag crew and make the first overtly revolutionary film in America and win and change the game. Because after that, Shaft came. Shaft was written for a white detective by a guy named Ernest Tidyman, and when my dad’s film Sweetback made money, they rewrote it with a black guy, and they got a young guy to do the music from Stax Records named Isaac Hayes. My dad, when he did Sweetback, had used Earth, Wind & Fire. So that was a super influential movie on me.Easy Rider was one I remember that just seemed to be the Peace and Freedom Party movement, in a way, reflected on screen. [Editor’s note: the Peace and Freedom Party was an organization founded in California in 1967 with the goal of ending the Vietnam War.]"

"It's just the way that they manage to get so much done in such a short space of time. It's three minutes. Change. Two minutes. Change. But they manage to get all of these beautiful things to happen, and I think you can sense that something amazing is about to happen. With the transition in British pop music at the time, it was losing a lot of the peace and love and starting to get quite moody. It reflected a lot of things that were happening, or at least on the horizon, at the time. The economy, the Vietnam war, the Troubles in Ireland, all of these different things. You could sense that something was happening to The Beatles on Revolver. It was exciting for me as well, because the stuff on this album is a long way off from 'She Loves You'. It was all quite mature and sophisticated. From day one I was a Beatles fan though. Those tunes are infectious and it's impossible not to like them. There's just something about their instant communication that I really love. I still listen to them now, and I find their music very inspiring. They were a direct influence on 'Breaking The Law' and 'Living After Midnight'. Those two songs are straight out of the Beatles songbook as far as simplicity and getting to the point goes. Short, little songs that sail away in a short space of time and are packed with hooks, melody and riffs."