When I heard Nirvana, it changed my life.

I love that I can dream about paisley, and then two months later, someone's wearing it. I'm basically styling America.

I grew up on Abdul Halim Hafez and Esmail Yassine, a great comedic actor. I think Adel Imam also changed and revolutionized the game and comedy in Egypt.

I love rapping. I do. My styling's similar to Missy Elliott - I think she's so dope. In a weird way, that's how I first learned the American accent: doing American rap songs.

I was drawn to West Africa. I did listen to a bunch of different styles of African music, and there was something about the percussion and the drums of West Africa, and the energy, that felt so...

My dad introduced me to Led Zeppelin, the Stones, and the Who, but Madonna and pop music came from my mom.

I owe everything to Spain - that's where I learned to write, to read, and to play football.

I was raised on African music, Harry Belafonte, and the Boston Pops. Then I got a dose of soul and hip-hop. I related to it immediately.

I have some role models. In Brazil, they are mostly writers. A writer named Afonso Henriques de Lima Barreto is my favorite. Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis is also a very important figure for me.

What is overlooked is the astonishing amount of history Hollywood has got right... For better or worse, nothing has been more influential in shaping our visions of the past than the commercial cinema.

In the early '90s, my cousin gave me a Snoop Dogg cassette tape, and the rawness of the lyrics was something new to me.

Danish values are something that I have always adhered to throughout my career in the U.S., and I'm happy to see Better Collective is applying those same values to the betting industry.

Every band had their own distinctive sound, but it was pretty much dancing music and rhythmic music with a tremendous emphasis on copying the Cuban models.

As a kid I used to wear my mother's dupattas and saris and emulate Hema Malini or Rekha in front of the mirror.

Hollywood does seem like the holy grail. Not to diminish anything from other countries, but it's the most mainstream and hardest to be a part of because there are so many people in it.

Baseball and its teams are proud of the sport's long-standing role as a change agent in American culture and society.

Me being in Houston, I wanted to leave there because it was only known for one thing. That's why I hit N.Y.; that's why I hit L.A. That's why I hit Paris, London. I just picked up basically...

I think that the quality of all bands is steadily improving and it is a pleasant thought to me that perhaps the efforts of Sousa's Band have quickened that interest and improved that quality.

I want to have a cultural impact. I want to be an inspiration, to show people what can be done.

I may have destroyed world culture, but MTV wouldn't exist today if it wasn't for me.

I'm just old enough to be able to say I got those very first Beatles records right as they were hitting America. My father brought them home. It was definitely the earliest musical influence on my...

Every time you hear an 808 drum machine beat on one of my songs, it comes from Freaknik.

We have a strong tradition in Toronto of really great film writers, and growing up in that climate is a big reason I pursued cinema studies.

I grew up in New York, so I had a lot of access to all kinds of movies, and I would handwrite reviews of them on loose-leaf paper.

Well, I've never been to Japan so I couldn't say. I do know that we have a bit of a following there however.

My musical influences growing up were limited to Korean folk songs and hymns as I went to a Christian boarding school where I was not allowed to listen to secular music.

I was born into hip hop and reggae, and then I started listening to more hardcore and punk bands like Bad Brains and the Suicidal Tendencies; they opened up a whole new world for me. They had...

Without a sense of place the work is often reduced to a cry of voices in empty rooms, a literature of the self, at its best poetic music; at its worst a thin gruel of the ego.

I'm heavily influenced by European and American cinema, but the further I get in my career, the more I find myself looking back East for inspiration.

I remember having a lot of Josh White albums. Johnny Cash. Elvis. I loved the Coasters.