You guys are regarded as one of the most respected rock

bands in the world.

What do you think got you guys to where you are today?

MIKE SHINODA: There's elements of hard work,

and there's elements of chemistry,

and magic, and luck, I'd say at the bottom of it

all we have had to have a foundation built on the music.

We learned very early on that we never

wanted to put anything on our record

that we didn't feel 100% confident of.

LISA LING: Tell me about your solo project, Fort Minor.

MIKE SHINODA: A lot of people are confused by it

because it has a name.

It's not just Mike Shinoda.

For me, it's a place where whether it's music or art,

it's just me.

LISA LING: So would you say then that music and visual art

are your rituals, things that you just

have to do and thrive on?

MIKE SHINODA: If I go for a few days

without doing something creative, I get weird.

I get crazy.

Whether it's music or drawing, painting, anything like that,

art for me, it's like breathing in the sense

that I don't think about.

I just do it.

LISA LING: And what do you feel when you

have pen or pencil to paper?

MIKE SHINODA: There are sometimes when I'm painting,

drawing that I'm really calm, and it's very soothing

to do it.

And there are other times when I'm hyper agitated.

In my head, its like a cyclone of noise, and it's loud.

My mind wanders off to some crazy place

and it just goes into that dream state or something.

And maybe that's why it's so addicting for me,

because I never know what is going to happen.

LISA LING: Can you tell me how your visual art has influenced

you in this new song with Fort Minor.

MIKE SHINODA: The song is an outsider song,

and the words are really from an underdog perspective.

And in spite of that, the tone is a very confident tone.

I wanted to do something with the art that

felt like it related to that, and so I went down to Venice,

and did this mural on 1,000 record jackets.

And I basically came up with all these different characters

that I thought of when I listened to the song.

So I started drawing people, and this is what I came up with.

LISA LING: And so are these, would you

say, representations of the underdogs in our society?

MIKE SHINODA: Yeah, so it was a gut feeling of this

is who feels like the song, and feels like what

I'm getting at with this piece.

LISA LING: How would you describe

the style of your artwork?

MIKE SHINODA: My favorite things to draw growing up

were basically Nintendo characters

because I was obsessed with that,

and then eventually got into movies, like Akira and Princess

Mononoke.

But all of those things kind of mesh

together to create whatever it is that I do.

I don't really know what to call it.

LISA LING: Shinoda.

MIKE SHINODA: Shinoda.

00:02:55,632 --> 00:02:57,381 LISA LING: What do you hope people get out

of not only your music but also your visual art?

MIKE SHINODA: When I'm making something,

sometimes I have a very specific message

with some of the pieces, and just like most artists,

coping with your own story and your own reactions and emotions

and things.

In its best form, it's like therapy.

And then the other half is what are people extracting

from whatever you've made?

It's not done until somebody else sees it and reacts to.

That's the other half of the experience.

00:03:38,557 --> 00:03:40,140 LISA LING: I hope you enjoyed learning

about Mike Shinoda's creative process, and his ritual of art.

To see more stories from this series, please subscribe.

And you can also watch this episode

about a young man who was bullied as a child that

emerged stronger than ever.

When you look in the mirror now who's the person that you see?

YOUNG MAN: So I see a lot more confident person,

I see someone who's made a lot of progress, and most of all,

I see someone who's on a journey.