You can't fake this music. You might be a great singer or a great musician but, in the need, that's got nothing to do with it. It's how you connect to the songs and to the history behind them.

I really turned into, you know, the real street kid. I was kind of like a runaway, but I had a mother, you know what I mean, and I had a place to stay.

That's where it begins and ends for me and these songs were the ones that touched me the deepest. It was like I was laying hold of some part of me that I didn't even know was there until I let it out.

See, I don't like places where people can't dance - don't like clubs or theatres where a bunch of bourgeois people sit around tip, tip, tipping their fingers.

You know the one with the big ears? Wait a minute, he ain't my president, he might be yours, he ain't my president. You know that woman he had singing for him, singing my song - she's gonna get her a- whipped. The great Beyoncé But I can't stand Beyoncé. She has no business up there, singing up there on a big ol' president day singing my song that I've been singing forever.

I like to shop, but I don't like to go out to dances.

The only time that I am really truly happy—when I feel at my best—is when I'm on the stage.