Music can be healing, and with my history and my knowledge of both sides of what looks like a gigantic divide in the world, I feel I can point a way forward to our common humanity again.

After embracing Islam in 1977, I considered the majority of underprivileged dark-skinned people of the so-called Third World brothers and sisters in humanity.

Ever since I became a Muslim ... I've had to deal with attempts to damage my reputation and countless insinuations seeking to cast doubt on my character and trying to connect me to causes, concepts or sayings which I do not and would never wilfully subscribe to.

It was important for me to duck out of the fast and furious life I'd been living as a pop star. I was in a different mood.

If you want to be free, be free, because there's a million things to be.

To be what you want to be, you must give up being what you are.

The words of the songs speak for themselves.