The Director: Stanley Kubrick
He's got a lot of films that're great, but Eyes Wide Shut is the main one for me. I feel like society makes it taboo to fantasize about people besides our spouses after we get married, like we're supposed to suppress that side of us, and it's not realistic. It was interesting the way Kubrick made that point. Also, the rituals of the secret sexual group looked very similar to the shit I read about weird Masonic orders, so that scared the shit out of me. Especially the scene where Dr. Harford attends that masked orgy-people don't understand the brilliance in it. What was there to be scared of? They were humans with party masks on. But then you realize that they were considered upstanding citizens in society taking part in the orgy, which made it so disturbing. I haven't really been able to decipher it. I'm still trying to figure out why that combination of eerie music, those masks, and people moving in slow motion was so fucking mesmerizing. The imagery was just incredible.

The City: Paris
I'm a sponge for Paris-the colors, sounds, and emotions. There's so much Masonic history there, and it's just an interesting place. It's not too big, but they really know what they love, and the fashion is great there. There's the wonderful shopping in Vendôme, and they know a lot about music. For instance, my man Pedro Winter, who's the manager of Daft Punk, can tell you who bought coffee for John Lennon back in the day. Of course, I love the sightseeing and going to different places like the libraries and museums. My favorite museum is the Louvre because it's a former royal palace with a [more recently added] glass pyramid in the central courtyard, so you ain't seen nothing like it.

The Artist: Leonardo da Vinci
He's a multilayered individual, and there's always more than meets the eye with him. Yeah, he was an architect, anatomist, sculptor, engineer, inventor, geometrician, musician, painter, and all that great shit, and you get excited about famous paintings like the "Mona Lisa" and "The Last Supper" when you first get into him. But beyond all that, with everything he did, he left a lot of hidden messages. All of his work is so metaphorical. His whole thing is to make incredible work that moves the masses, but to the right set of people, it provokes questions. I want people to hear my songs and love them, and then I want them to ask questions, and it has to be multilayered in order to do that. So I started doing that a long time ago, always having hidden messages. It causes you to go in, and put the words together and really figure it out, and then you go, Oh shit, that's deep.

The Architect: Frank Lloyd Wright
He built everything from houses to resorts to churches to museums, and the materials that he chose were great. If you lived near a mountain range, he'd use rocks in your home. His stuff is so ill that Fallingwater, which was built as someone's home in Bear Run, Pennsylvania, is now a national monument. He made it so the outdoor terraces actually hang over waterfalls. It's almost like the forest and waterfalls surrounding the house are part of the house itself. The Guggenheim Museum in New York is his other monster design. When you're outside looking at the central spiral, it doesn't look like anything else. The building just stands out from anything else in Manhattan. Some people even complained because they felt the building itself was overshadowing the pieces being displayed inside.

The Musician: Herbie Hancock
Q-Tip put me on to Herbie's music. I knew he did a lot of great jazz, but I didn't know that his jazz albums like Head Hunters had funk in them. My favorite song from him is "Come Running to Me," and there's a few other ones that I gotta listen to over and over. His chord sections are great, and I try my hardest to put chords in music. I play chords by ear, so Quincy Jones said to me, "You really should know what you're playing because it's another beautiful side to it." After I heard Herbie Hancock, I decided to take lessons because it was just rubbing it in my face even more like, "You fucking idiot. Do you hear this shit he is playing?" You have to know chords. It's one thing to play by ear, and it's cool that I can hear it and figure out the proper key and pitch, but I want to be able to play improv like Herbie. I've never heard so many jazz chord extensions where it's like, "What the fuck? He's playing two sets of chords on top of each other, and it sounds crazy." Even when he plays those atonal chords, it's the most perfect thing you've ever heard.

The Jewelry: Joel Arthur Rosenthal
He has a shop in Place Vendôme, and his initials are the only way you know it's his store. I feel like Van Cleef & Arpels does a lot of it now, but for a while this guy would just make jewelry out of things he was inspired by. Like he might see a parrot and make a parrot out of precious jewels and metals. Also, he studied art history at Harvard, so he incorporates a lot of elements from the past. I always thought his stuff was so ornate and incredible. He only creates around 70 pieces a year, so if you get one of his pieces it's probably a one of one.

The Designer: Ralph Lauren
Ralph Lauren has simply captured American history in his line because his stuff always has that classic look. He's a true voice of America. When you wear Polo shit, you're automatically a classic American photograph waiting to happen. He never tries to chase trends with his lines, and come on, he built a billion-dollar enterprise from a $50,000 loan. He even refused to sell his wide ties to Bloomingdale's at first when they told him they wouldn't carry them unless he made them narrower and took his name off the tie's label. Now every Bloomingdale's has a huge-ass Polo section.

The Author: Carl Sagan
Carl Sagan's a really deep dude. He was this famous astronomer and astrobiologist who wrote popular science books. Cosmos was based off the Cosmos TV series on PBS. It was the most watched TV series on PBS of all time. In the book he explores human perception of the solar system and our place in it throughout history. He talks about time-travel, quantum mechanics, quantum physics, and how all that crazy shit relates to our world. He even traces things like sex and a lot of the scientific knowledge we use today back to billions of years ago. But it's interesting because he tells you in layman's terms so you can really understand it. Home // STYLE // STYLE FEATURES // Style and Design