When you hear about what someone else is going through, and you are unable to distance yourself from it or in any way muzzle your empathy and are inspired to actually do something, these are moments to learn from.

It's sad when someone you know becomes someone you knew.

Shirley Sherrod seems like a good and dedicated person.

Trying to write music, be in a band and keep it all happening is one of the hardest, morale-destroying, heartbreaking things you will ever try to do - and that's when it's going well.

I listen to blues music a lot and that's a good person feeling bad and celebrating that pain by releasing it in that kind of joyous fashion.

I think hip-hop has definitely brought the black experience to white kids more than the civil rights movement did and more than any teacher's well-intentioned lecture on Martin Luther King did.

For me, music was an age/time/place thing. One day I woke up and realized I was done. That was many years ago.