Before there was Rick Ross, there was another Boss, and that Boss, Bruce Springsteen, has a new album out this week called High Hopes (incidentally, he's probably headed for a No. 1 debut on the Billboard 200). Bruce has aged pretty gracefully—not only does he look a decade younger than he actually is (64), he also does hip stuff like give a keynote talk at South By Southwest and listen to hip-hop.
In an interview with NPR's Ann Powers, he spoke on the subject a little bit, specifically mentioning his admiration of Kanye West. Powers asked about several songs on his albums that have credits that read "loops by Bruce Springsteen," implying some familiarity with the type of sampling techniques used in hip-hop. Bruce's answer was revealing: He's a fan of Yeezus, and he also likes classics like Biggie and 2Pac. Unsurprisingly, given Springsteen's own political bent, he identifies with the politics of Public Enemy, too. Check out his full response below:
I wonder if at some point in your listening, because I know that you listen to everything and one of the things I treasured about your South By Southwest talk that you gave was how you erase genre and you said, "We should embrace everything that sounds right to our ears," and I wondered if hip-hop was something at some point that kind of, the light went on for you and you got it or how does that work in relationship to you?
Read the rest of the fascinating interview here, and find out how Bruce feels about some of the acts he's influenced more directly, like Arcade Fire and country singer Eric Chuch, as well. Or, you know, get to work on that "The Glory"/"Glory Days" mashup because it isn't going to make itself.
[via NPR]
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