"That's what I'd listen to on Bikini Kill tours. I'd put on my Walkman with my Fear Of A Black Planet cassette and I would go running and listen to it. I felt like they were making this really accessible music full of political ideas that were often very personal and sometimes very broad and I was like, "I want to make music like this, that you want to listen to because it sounds so great, but when you dig into the lyrics they're also smart and sometimes funny and very tongue in cheek." That's what I wanted to make so I'd just listen to it all the time. When I was running it was such good music to listen to because the beats are so awesome. It was a massive influence to Le Tigre. Not that we did hip-hop but I wanted to do songs that sounded good. Public Enemy made me okay with having higher production values. You can still be extremely political and radical and say what you want but do it in a way that just sounds great. First you notice how great it sounds and then, as you keep listening to it, you go, "Wait, what's this about? They mention this book, they mention Marcus Garvey, I want to go find out about that!"

"My second film is an Israeli film called “The Kindergarten Teacher.” It’s a story about a kindergarten teacher, a woman who discovers that one of her young students, this cherubic little 5-year-old boy, is a poetic prodigy. The movie is, on one level, a kind of a psychological thriller, and a very disturbing one, about her growing obsession with this boy. And her sense that it’s her mission to save him from a society that isn’t gonna care about him. It also works, though, as a critique of that society; Israel, in the director’s view, has abandoned its cultural heritage, its commitment to art, and has become a materialistic and shallow society. The filmmaking was so simple and clear, and it was a very suspenseful movie. I was sort of frustrated because it had a very small release in the United States. It didn’t have Juliette Binoche in it [laughs], so it was not even on the radar, necessarily, of people who go and see movies with subtitles. And yet, it’s very entertaining. But also with this theme: “Why is poetry important? What are the values of a society that kind of push it to the side or don’t take it seriously? And how do you counteract that?” It’s just a very rich movie that I wish more people had seen."

"This is not the sexy sounding Iggy like on Lust For Life. It’s not blown out and swinging all over the place. It’s real dry and angular and square to an almost suffocating degree. It’s strong and Iggy’s poetry is strong. It feels authentic. Once you get over that, it doesn’t sound like it was recorded at the most hip studio and that it’s smaller sounding, you can appreciate the production that is there and the performances that are there. It’s not trying to rip your head off. Lust For Life had a certain vibe as did The Idiot. They weren’t hi-fi but they packed a wallop. New Values is tight and restrained. It’s not going to fucking cum all over you. There’s no orgasm there. It’s slow methodical masturbation, coming from Iggy who is very Little Richard in his sexuality. [Black impersonates Iggy singing: “I’m not going to go any more, any more, any more.""] There’s honest admission of frailties and the human condition. It is saying, “I am the lamest, I am the shortest."" It’s still bravado and fuck you, get out of my way, it’s not just saying I want to fuck you either. He’s trying to say some stuff. It’s not diary rock. When Iggy gets poetic, he’s the best Iggy."