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I'm not going to do the Ben Harper house record or the Ben Harper drum 'n' bass record.

I have no shame in making music that maybe, if you listen to it long enough, you'll realize you've heard this or that part of it before. I'm still very excited by an amazingly written song, so that's really the thing that I work on when I make records with people.

Sometimes you're gonna jump off a cliff and land flat on your face. Then you just get up and go again. But sometimes you dive off the cliff and start soaring with the eagles, and that's when you find new music, places that you've never been before.

Everyone is trying to make these huge songs; I just make things that I want to listen to. Music that I will be comfortable listening to 10 years from now, that's my only thing.

As a songwriter, I feel like, just for inspiration and research purposes, I have to listen to everything.

There's 40 or 50 songs that nobody's heard that I've done in between albums. There's a whole evolution from Midnite Vultures to Sea Change that's never been released.

I'm definitely not going to go and sing a song that condones certain things.

Still for fun, I play the drums, but I don't do much recording with them.

I'll try not to let a day go by without making a song. I don't think I've created a lot of music.

I wouldn't record any song that I didn't like.