"That album! Oh man. Supa Dupa Fly was such a jam but Missy was just a creative fucking force when Da Real World came out. I remember she looked like Lee Bowery and her skin was painted true black, her eyebrows up to her forehead, back when videos could still be incredible videos. It was so top-of-the-line, Timbaland and Missy collaborating, and I felt like it was her time to shine as a writer and as a producer. It set the tone of that time. I was obsessed with it. 'Hot Boyz'? It is hit after hit. 'She's A Bitch'? What a jam? That was the video. She was so innovative and ahead of her fucking time. Everybody was on that, it was a family affair, but she is a genre all of her own. She is her own thing. Nobody is like Missy. She is one of those people where I'm like, sexism is alive, because if she was a man, she would be getting all of these crazy props. She's so incredible, and so underrated. Her harmonies are unbeatable. Un. Beatable. She's a maestro, a genius, a music nerd, an absolute culture nerd. And a style nerd. She's just such an icon. She was cool too. She's powerful. She is performance art, and that wasn't in hip hop at that time. And it certainly wasn't in female hip hop. The thing about Lil' Kim was that she sold sexuality and she did it so well, like no one is Lil' Kim, but Missy wasn't selling conventional sexuality, she wasn't selling female sensuality, that wasn't what she was doing, and I relate to that as a person who is big and a person who isn't attracted to conventional things. I like the weirdness, I like the things that stick out, I like things to look a little clowny, or look a little crazy and that's why she's such an icon. Same with Outkast. I think Southerners are just naturally weirder. Look at Lil' Wayne, Missy, Timberland, Outkast, Neptunes, all of those are Southerners so they're different. A different breed of rapper."

"This is from Live-Evil, which is a really intense and brutal album, but ‘Little Church’ is a little three-minute moment that’s a really beautiful, otherworldly, disorientating and extremely contained song within a crazy, fiery record. “It’s amazing what this pulls off in three minutes. The lead is somebody whistling in combination with a trumpet, there’s this moving, really melodic bassline and a crazy organ sound swirling around the entire track to this beautiful, almost Brazilian chord progression, but there’s no rhythm whatsoever. It’s so unique and I’d never heard that kind of tonality or sensibility. “It probably relates more to the kind of songwriting that we do rather than jazz, it’s not really jazz, it’s closer to Brazilian music or like writing a ballad, but without words. It’s another one of those songs I’ve always come back to, I still refer and think back to it when we’re making records as an example of a certain kind of energy, vibe and intensity. “It sounds like it’s on another planet, I couldn’t have imagined hearing anything like this before I heard it and as soon as I did it transported me in a way that I’d never experienced, it was like entering a dream world. That’s something I always think of as a goal in making music, entering a landscape, a dream-like state or trance, like accessing something outside of your own reality. I love when music can do that, it feels like you’re entering another reality basically. “I first heard this when I was fourteen and when you’re that age the serotonin in your brain functions so differently, everything means so much more. Your brain chemistry changes over time, it’s still fun, but you’ve got to work a little harder to make it as fun as when you were younger, but because I still have that memory, I can kind of conjure the same serotonin rush it gave me as a kid. “You learn to appreciate other sides of music as you get older, you can access the same kind of stimulation without it being this overwhelming serotonin blast."