Mike Shinoda
Mike Shinoda
Michael Kenji "Mike" Shinodais an American musician, rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer, graphic designer, manager and film composer. He co-founded Linkin Park in 1996 and is the band's rhythm guitarist, songwriter, keyboardist, and co-vocalist. Shinoda later created a hip hop-driven side project, Fort Minor, in 2004. He served as a producer for tracks and albums by Lupe Fiasco, Styles of Beyond, and The X-Ecutioners...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionGuitarist
Date of Birth11 February 1977
CityAgora Hills, CA
CountryUnited States of America
I feel really lucky to be in a band where the guys, for all the opportunities to do things that potentially would be good for them but detrimental to the group, that everybody stayed loyal to the whole.
I usually like to make really dramatic songs that are dynamic from part to part - a lot of jumping from really quiet to really loud.
Right now, when it comes to making an album, we really want to give our fans just Linkin Park. We don't want to water it down with anything else or confuse it with anything else. Meteora is just us and that's where our focus has been. So hopefully the fans can enjoy that.
global warming. every day i leave my house and think, "was it this hot last year?" the heat this summer here in LA and in most of the US has been unbearable. i can't remember another time when it was 105 degrees fahrenheit out here (40.5 celsius), and that's the kind of weather we've been having pretty much every day.
The casual listener won't be around forever.
I like sneakers. I guess I could call myself a collector.
I'm excited to doing more scoring work in the future.
I find that the things that really, you know, get us fired up, tend to be things that, for example, things that you talk about tonight, what we see in the news.
I spent ten years playing classical piano, and that was what led to keyboards and eventually to production and to Linkin Park.
I liked the piano. I always liked playing. I just hated homework.
For me, I feel like, if the right movie comes along, I'd do it again. It's not about the budget. It's about whether it's something that I'm excited to work on.
If I weren't making music, I'd be the kid who writes into the magazines and says, "why don't you guys ever cover anything that's different? Hip hop is so much of the same thing over and over again." I love hip hop, so I wanted to make an album from that standpoint, 'cause that's who I am.
I've been really excited about some new cutting edge electronic music and technology.
I was a producer and rapper before Linkin Park. Once the band took off, it was the center of my focus. A couple of years ago, I started missing doing straight-up hip hop, and that's when Fort Minor began.