I have worked with a lot of different great people. One of the things my partner, my manager Judy Weinstein, instilled in [David] Morales and myself is that the quality goes in before the name goes home.

The lack of quality dance music and the fact that here in the United States, house music is not seen as anything viable by the music industry. I figured that this might be another shot at the industry looking at the possibilities of house music and giving it a little bit more legitimacy than what they give it. It's a host of different things, but it's something that I needed to say musically.

I'm of the mind that your private life is private and you don't need to put everything out there about yourself - but on there, I describe myself as a citizen of the world, a man of music.

The first job I got when I was in high school was working for a department store in New York. I worked in the stockroom. That's when I learned that I couldn't work for anyone else, because I was spoken to in a way that I wasn't spoken to at home.

When you create something out of nothing it's the most thrilling thing.

I am definitely in the right place doing the right thing. These are the rewards.

There are two people that probably influenced me more than anybody out of all the artists out here: that's Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson.