I was constantly looking for things outside of myself to make me feel good, and I think now that feeling can come from the inside, and that's why I meditate now twice a day.
You need to stop looking outside and look inside - and it's such a good feeling. A feeling of love and that everything is going to be OK, and all you have to do is nothing.
It's just about being honest. I listen to a lot of stuff that's out there, some of which I wrote, and I'm like, 'Where is that? Where's the honesty?' So that's what I want to get to in my music now.
I think I was blessed with this talent for a reason. No one told me how to write a song, but I'm just good at it, you know. There are a lot of other things in my life that I'm not so good at, but writing a song is not one of them.
I just sing over hip-hop beats, you know. That's what I've been doing. That's what I started in '09 in my dorm room.
I did rap when I was a teenager - started rapping when I was nine, and started singing when I was 20. I kinda sing like a rapper would sing.
A lot of people considered my career as an artist largely over. Two albums got shelved. But I've made music since I was a little kid, and for the majority of that time, I wasn't paid for it. So I will always be making it.
From what I understand about Shakespeare - which isn't a lot - there was no copyright law when he was writing. He sampled at will, and it wasn't seen as a bad thing.
Tons of people inspire my music, and now when I do an interview, I'm scared to say who they are.
I'll read on Twitter, 'Do you still do music?' Music is all I do, all day.
Honestly, I don't go to clubs very often.
I've remixed lots of other people's songs, from Adele to Electric Light Orchestra to Beyonce, so when my record label said, 'Why don't you give 'Ibiza' to someone to remix?' I said, 'Sure,' because I like the idea of people reimagining art and making something new out of it.
When you're a writer, your song has to resonate with the person you're writing for in order for them to want to sing it. But if you're an artist, you can sing whatever you want.
Avicii's been a supporter of my music for years, and we've been writing songs together for a long time.
There was a time when being loaded and loved and popular really mattered a lot to me. I'd say that when I was less popular, I learned to be happy without those things.
I always wanted everyone to love me, probably because I didn't love myself enough. But now I realize that when you're an artist, you're making the music that's in your head and in your heart, and not for any other reason.
It's not the job of the art to accommodate me and make me more money, make me more famous and get me more girls.
I think - for a period of time, I did think art was there to serve me, but it took me a minute to reset.
If a song about blowing your shot becomes popular, that's really funny.
I had an initial wave of popularity that, in time, crashed, and I slowly became less popular and less successful, and I had to figure out who I was without those things.
