Music lives in me. Life is a song to me. I have the gift of rhyme, and I'm always trying to write and rhyme. Music is just natural everyday occurrence with me.

I think [music and acting], they are connected, all that stuff. It's your emotional self, is pretty much how you do it, I think, from whatever place you do it, whether you're acting or you're singing.

Nobody can ever make enough money for as many poor relatives as I've got. Somebody's got a sick kid, or somebody needs an operation, somebody ain't got this, somebody ain't got that. Or to give the kids all a car when they graduate.

Find out what you are, then do it on purpose

I'll bring my grits when I travel, because I get so hungry on the road.

I've tried different things through the years to get some play on mainstream. I'll try to tailor-make it.

The worst thing about poverty is not the actual living of it, but the shame of it.