Since I started playing, really, since I was like three. I imagined myself famous but the vision was blurry, I guess. What you see on TV isn't a realistic picture.

I haven't had the time to do a lot of writing. But nothing's really changed about me. It's just my day-to-day activities have changed, and as a person, I have to adapt to those changes.

Prince is extremely soulful, but he can get real rock-'n'-rollish. So can Lenny Kravitz. Lenny's real soulful but he's got that rock with him, too. On the whole, I guess black folks ain't trying to handle rock-'n'-roll, really.

Especially when I first came up here to New York, everybody wanted to hook me up with this guy who's Prince's sound engineer. Almost everybody wanted me to hook up with him and go to L.A. and do all that just because that's the route Prince took. And for a while I was listening to all of that. "Yeah, if it's good enough for Prince, it should be good enough for me." But I mean, that's not the case, really. Prince is a different person than I am. You just got to find the right person for you, whoever you click with.

I'm closest to the music when I'm onstage with the band, playing.

I don't know how I want to come across looking, really. I just look how I am.

I'm making black music. That's the only outline for me, really. That's the only boundary to stay with. It's soul music. I'm going all out in those terms.