When you make music, you're in really direct contact with your fans out there, so you hear all kinds of stories.
I'm trying to be me and embrace all the parts of me that have grown up, listened to more music and soaked up more influences.
I don't get to listen to music for fun very often; a lot of what I'm hearing is for work and isn't released yet.
I'm a bit of an insomniac. I go to bed at 5am because I get caught up in watching TV or listening to music at night.
I try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music.
Music is supposed to be an escape. It's supposed to be somewhere you go, where you can be yourself, or be whatever you want to be.
The Grammy is the highest honor in music that we can receive, outside of having fans come and watch you every night and clap.
But that's the problem with playing new music sometimes before the record comes out: You have a bunch of yayhoots with opinions.
I think in music and a lot of creative fields, people's egos get in the way of their ability of seeing the big picture.
I want to make my music a genre that people can immediately identify: something that never existed.
If you get satisfaction out of playing music and entertaining people and it makes you feel right, then go for it.
I'm really in touch with my fans. Through their emails, letters and stories is how I decide what music I'm going to perform.
Music when healthy, is the teacher of perfect order, and when depraved, the teacher of perfect disorder.
Do people have an idea of who they think I am? Yes, and that's fine with me. My music will speak for itself.
I listen to music when I'm feeling down or just a certain way. I don't know what I'd do without it!
I always wanted to work with Michael Jackson. His music will live forever and with technology nowadays... maybe I could.
If you give yourself too much time, you kind of over-obsess about the music. It's not supposed to be like that.
If you think my music is sentimental and self-absorbed, I agree with you.
There aren't that many things left that haven't already been done, especially with music. I'm interested in ideas that can shake us all up.
The fact that we elected Obama was a sign that the black struggle inherent in the blues and so much of the music I have loved can triumph.
I download, like, forty songs a day, I'm a big music collector and a big record collector.
