I tried to just do things like make some money, be responsible, help out other artists who I see have had a similar path.

Funnily enough, I feel the most free to be myself when I'm not doing my solo project. Whenever I'm in a situation when it's a side thing or it's something not so infused with my ego. When I'm all over everything, it's a big responsibility and half the time leaves me in some weird nether state of insecurity and doubt.

The ideal is to live forever, right? Or to live right now and just be grateful that I feel good. I'm definitely grateful for every second that I'm alive. At this point in my life, I definitely take time out throughout the day to just stop and be like, "Everything is cool." It's as good as it's gonna be, because it only gets worse.

When making a record, I could done a new face pretty easily and use all these different devices to hide who I am - or who I was - which really had very little to do with what I was trying to convey.

I've kind of gotten more timid. I used to be fearless - at a certain point I didn't care about what anybody thought. I had all the answers and I could have been as bad as I wanted to be. But nowadays I just want to be good and make people happy.

As soon as you start to think of that thing that you want to convey or say, you can always just say it much better than you can actually rhyme it or stuff it into a song. It's very, very difficult to just kind of get your point across without going the back way. And you have to be good at that, to not think about things so hard. Let the pen take over, so that it's somebody else's job to dissect the lyrics and tell you what you're all about.

I still have a very nonintellectual, nonjudgmental relationship with melody and the music as I hear it all in my head.