I'm still trying to re-create a Ray Charles concert that I heard when I was fifteen years old, and all my nerve endings were fried and transformed, and electricity shot through me.

My earliest influences were things I heard in my household.

My songwriting and my style became more complex as I listened, learned, borrowed and stole and put my music together.

A lot of what I have always done is do other singers.

I am not a jazz singer. I wouldn't place myself on that footing. I wouldn't even enter that arena.

I think the women - Lauryn Hill, Mary J. Blige, Erykah Badu - are doing new conceptual things and using their voices to create new American music.

Quite frankly, I've always listened to the black side of the radio dial. Where I grew up, there was a lot of it and there was a lot of live music around.