I'm a big hip-hop fan since being a kid. It was the first music that spoke to me and made me feel like, 'Yeah.'
I didn't grow up watching TV or going to McDonald's or listening to mainstream music. Like, the casting agents are looking elsewhere for the cheerleader role.
At the beginning, at my shows, there were a lot of press and people from record companies. Now there are people who are there to just listen to the music and are genuine fans.
I am not very relaxed about bad reviews. But I am resilient. I grieve, curse and swear, put on loud music, and get on with the next job.
I think music is a powerful medium because it co-inspires. It inspires the artist who then inspires the listener, and it's a back-and-forth process.
In the last few years I've been listening to jazz more than anything else. I listen to a lot of world music and experimental here and there.
I've seen whales calving in the waters off Maui, and I've watched my children being born. But music is the most beautiful thing of all.
I feel this music has nurtured me as I've been immersing myself in it. I've felt supported by it.
It's never too late to do anything new when it comes to music.
I've always wanted to make music like people write plays, so I was inspired by writers as much as musicians.
I even got letters form kids in hospitals saying the music is what keeps them going, and that really touched my heart.
So evidently music was a killer app and is a killer app for computer and the Internet; it just took the tech industry a long time to hear that message.
As a singer, it's basic to preserve what I like to do, which is music, and also to remember my cradlesongs in Spanish.
One second I'll be listening to country, and then the next I'll be listening to rock and then R&B. It's ridiculous. I'm all over the place with my music.
Like many musicians, I don't look back much... only concentrate on what music I'm doing, and occasionally look ahead.
I want to put my vibe and my feel of music into an album and have people from different places around the world feel that and hear that.
I mean as long as I have been doing music I know I am only 30% of what I could be and want to be.
I think I sound like a fella who's always making a plea through his music. Sort of a plea of sincerity.
I don't know if a song is going to be a hit or it's going to flop. I never know. I just do the music and if people like it, they like it.
People get comfort from music. They get joy from it and understanding from it, and most of all, the average person can't do without it in some sense.
When I got out of the Nazz, I had it in my mind that simply to be eclectic was an important aspect of making music. It was something that I derived from The Beatles.
