When I was about 18 I had this musical epiphany. I was a street musician in Philadelphia, writing these blues tunes about graffiti and basketball, but listening to hip-hop with my friends. One night I started rapping over the end of this blues rhythm and I was like, “This is dope.” The next week I sat down with my dobro and wrote my first rap.

Beck Backlash
At first I got gigs with people like A Tribe Called Quest, but the hip-hopers didn’t want to see white boys playing instruments and rapping. Beck was dropping at the time and peopled compared us, which pissed us off. Beck’s records are made like hip-hop records with loops and samples and our albums are recorded live like jazz or blues albums. They’re spontaneous and there has to be the magical take. So I hated Beck, though I had never met him [laughter], but now I’m a huge fan.

Past Records
My favorite album is probably the first record I did with the band. That first record pretty much sustained our career. I wasn’t happy with it at first, but over time I realized it captured me in that moment in my life. I also really dig The Hustle, but honestly that record got us dropped from Universal. I felt I made a viable record with depth and commercial viability, but it just didn’t sell. That was a big disappointment. Then I was really unsure if we should release Lemonade at first [but] that was successful. So you never know—the industry is so weird.

Superhero Brother
We’ve had some of the songs on our new album for a minute and others are new. We did two different recording sessions. A lot of the more electric stuff was recorded in Philadelphia at The Studio where a lot of hip-hop and neo soul artists recorded. The later sessions were recorded in the country, outside of Boston, and are a lot more acoustic.

“Peace, Love and Happiness”
I was on this Brushfire tour in Brazil and Donavon Frankenreiter took us to the favelas [ghettos] of Rio de Janeiro to play for these kids at a community center. We had this real magical day, and I wrote “Peace, Love and Happiness” for the kids to sing at our show that night. I played it the whole Brazilian tour, but our record was already cut, so I cut it at the last minute and it got picked as the single. It’s funny how things work.

Clowning with Jack
I met Jack Johnson through a mutual friend who is a surf photographer. We hung out, shared some songs and I asked him if I could cut “Rodeo Clowns.” He said, “I have to think about it” and I said, “Don’t think too long” [laughter]. He came back to me and said, “Can we do it as a collaboration?” and that started his whole thing.

Another Cold Beverage
My goal has always been to make a well-rounded record that has songs with a lot of depth and songs that are lighter. I look at the blues stuff and Bob Dylan, who can talk about serious things and lighter stuff on the same record. Some of my biggest hits have been those lighter songs, like “Cold Beverage,” but some people write off my entire body of work because of that. I’m glad that song was just a cult hit because otherwise we might have been a novelty act. But because it was an underground hit it allowed us to have this underground fanbase that found out about all our different styles.

The First 15 Years
I think it’s a pretty big accomplishment. It’s funny, when we first started performing, my drummer said, “I can’t believe the Chili Peppers have been together for 15 years.” So I think it says a lot about our dedication to the music and the support we have gotten through our fanbase. We’ve persevered and really stuck with it.

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