What I do isn't black music, it's just my music.

Nobody's going to sell 10 million records by not working hard.

Any song I don't feel good about, I shelve. Anything you ever hear me sing, it's because I want to.

I definitely dislike pomposity and artifice. I hope that I'm not that. Once I write a song, it belongs to the world, and the way people perceive it, it's cool.

If you take a bunch of superstars and put them in a room where they don't have their assistants and entourage, it's funny to see what happens.

I was a pioneer in MTV and I was there from the very beginning. So I saw how that developed and how loose it was and how much fun it was in its looseness. And I was influenced a lot by that.

I was just like a 21st century person waiting to be born, and this is the medium that I thrive in. And I feel stronger now than I did any time since I've been a teenager - I mean, musically, creatively.