Art & Creativity Quote by Richard D. James

There is a particular kind of honesty that only sounds like arrogance because we are trained to expect artists to perform humility on cue. Richard D. James, a musician whose whole brand is mischief and meticulous control, refuses that script. “My music’s my favourite music ever” isn’t just bravado; it’s a diagnostic statement about how he listens. He’s describing music as a private ecosystem: the ideal track is the one that perfectly matches your internal frequency, your sense of rhythm, your thresholds for tension and release. No one else can build that as precisely for you as you can.

The little throat-clearing qualifier - “It sounds really arrogant” - matters. It signals awareness of the social taboo, then plows right through it. That tension is the point. James has long operated in a space where persona, prank, and precision blur; taking him at face value is always optional. The line reads like a dare to interview culture itself, which loves to translate experimental artists into digestible modesty or tortured-genius cliché. He gives you neither.

Subtextually, it’s also a defense of obsessive craft. If you’re the type to tweak a snare for eight hours, you’d better actually like what you’re making, because external validation arrives late, distorted, or not at all. He’s framing taste as authorship: if music is sound design plus worldview, preferring your own work is less narcissism than coherence. The real flex isn’t “I’m better than everyone.” It’s “I know exactly what I want to hear, and I made it.”