Definitely. The way I look is a reflection of who I am. That's how my music is too.

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.

Like I say, it depends on how you do rock-'n'-roll. If you do it right then I think people will appreciate it for what it is.

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.

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.

Definitely. The way I look is a reflection of who I am. That's how my music is too.

It's not too hard to play Fender Rhodes keyboard if you get the right one, with some good action on the keys. If you got an old one that ain't been touched up, it could be kind of difficult to get real loose on it.