It's a tough thing to know that when you're making your album, you're going to end up collaborating with, say, Wal-Mart, on your artwork. That just sucks. And the pressure behind getting the numbers real fast is, to me, dizzying.

If the melody is telling me this is what the song is about, then I'm sort of forced into confession, autobiography or fantasy. If I don't do that, I've hamstrung the melody.

The nice thing about age is worrying less and less about what people think.

I'm not really a strange person or anything, so if there's music I like, usually there's other people who like it too.

White people don't sing together very often, and when they do, it's about the celebrity of the song. The singing at my shows is all about harmony.

Next door, there's an old man who lived to his nineties and one day passed away in his sleep. And his wife, she stayed for a couple of days and passed away. I'm sorry, I know that's a strange way to tell you that I know we belong.

The press is like any business. Its a group of really intelligent individuals that ends up being one slathering, one-eyed, drooling monster.