As a drummer my job is to reproduce what made the people bop their heads when they first heard the album on the radio, or when they watched the music video.

I learned how to play the music working with my dad. Because in the beginning I was super excited, I had this gig, I was a kid, I got cocky and didn't want to take lessons.

My brother (Bruno Mars) is as smart as he is because a lot of things he's doing, creativity wise, our Dad used to do. Things my father used to do visually and musically. I see a lot of my father's influence in both of us.

As a drummer my job is to reproduce what made the people bop their heads when they first heard the album on the radio, or when they watched the music video.

Once I became a cop. I dived into that career. I never wanted to be an LAPD officer because I thought 'LA is super dangerous, not the place I'd want to be a cop'. But as a boy of course I was into guns, cops and robbers, so that's why it was cool to me and thought 'Yeah I could do this job'.

As a musician, we should always want to strive to be better, we can always make improvements. It's easy to get comfortable and it's easy to find your voice and your sound, but I always wanted to be better.

I pretty much isolated myself away from drums. I stopped looking at Modern Drummer, I stopped looking at websites.