My mum liked gospel and R&B, Chaka Khan, and Whitney Houston.
Someone like Donald Trump can't control the way I show love to my brother. He can't control the way I feel about my neighbors.
I think the reason why I see life as this never-ending struggle is because I imagine it having endless potential.
The song 'Leroy and Lanisha' on my album 'The Epic' is really my homage to 'Linus and Lucy.'
I'm trying to just keep pushing on the things I've been wanting to do in my life and in music. And think of new things to do!
So much good music has been looked over because of preconceived notions of genre.
I can't really worry about nuclear war any more than I can worry about the aliens coming.
We're the only ones who can change our reality.
Jazz is like a telescope, and a lot of other music is like a microscope.
I never had a problem moving between jazz and hip-hop.
By the time I was about 15, I was out playing gigs and knew I was going to be a musician.
There's this notion that music has to be confined to some small, simple place to be popular, something I never believed.
Jazz is a part of me.
I feel like I'm musically free to do what I want.
I was that kid who made his friends listen to the albums they didn't want to.
Hip-hop is a collage. It samples from all different styles of music.
I like living on that edge, musically. I like a bit of insecurity and that feeling of not really knowing what's going to happen.
I wanted to be a positive force in the world.
The musicians I really looked up to as a kid were the ones who could play everything.
When you're making music, you're creeping up on your heart and pouring it out into something.
There's a deeper level of healing that needs to happen for the world in general. There's a mass of people who are broken.
Music is an expression of life, who you are, and what you've been through.
