Songfacts: Well, talking about some great lyrics and coming up with them, the Cole Porter lyric you lifted for "Crucify," that's a phenomenal way to say it: "I crucify the verse." Can you talk about coming up with that song and if Cole Porter is an inspiration for you?

K-os: I heard that song when I went to see American Hustle. I'm very much a solo movie goer. If I have a free day and I've answered all the emails and I have nothing to do musically, I just go check a movie out. I remember here in Vancouver I went to a theater to see American Hustle a couple of years ago. I'm a huge Amy fan, huge Christian fan. And Jeremy Renner in that movie is amazing.

There's a part of the movie where Christian Bale starts befriending Jeremy Renner, even though it's kind of a setup. He's just befriending him. So Jeremy Renner takes him out for dinner, him and their wives. They have a great time and start drinking wine, they're partying. A couple songs come on, and there's this montage of them singing these songs.

One of the songs that comes on is this Ella Fitzgerald/Cole Porter song "It's De-Lovely." I'm sitting there in the movie theater looking at people like, are you guys hearing this?! This song?

People were watching the movie, but to me, as a rapper, as an emcee, to hear Ella Fitzgerald say, "Control your desire to curse while I crucify the verse," I immediately went on wi-fi, regardless of how annoying it was to people, and started Googling this song. I made all my little notes and saved all these links in my phone and continued watching the movie.

As soon as I got out of the movie, I went home and sampled the song, and I put the beat together in 15 to 20 minutes. Boom. And then the verses came really easy.

But I'd never heard someone sing that before. And to crucify the verse, I mean, what more could you want? There's so many metaphors in that: to say something so powerful that you kill it, for it to rise again. Or to do something so well that it ceases to exist, but in ceasing to exist, it's immortalized. There's so many ways to look at it.

http://www.songfacts.com/blog/interviews/k-os/

the rest of the interview is great read too