The songs that I've written about Africa, and AIDS and HIV and about the power of humanitarian love, those songs, I'm gonna sing them because I know that it's real.

I'm still afraid of things, obviously - we're human. But I like that feeling of being afraid.

Anyway, in my performance style, I'm a singer-songwriter. People can call it neo-soul or R&B or whatever. But at the core, when you see me live, I'm a singer-songwriter.

Eating is not one of the things that I do now to deal with pain, because I don't ever want to do that. But I isolate myself, that's what I do.

My life is so tumultuous. I dive into everything. I'm feeling all up and down and sleepy and moody and hormonal - it just gets crazy. Just to keep myself balanced, I do things like yoga and meditation.

There's another style of meditation that I've been doing since my mid-twenties. Tapping into your higher self to get a glimpse of yourself from the outside and get insight into what's going on in your life. I learned that from my godfather in my mid-twenties.

I started dealing with my emotional pain by writing. I always had been a writer, but just not songs. Saying things on paper that I would never, ever say, and saying things to myself, admitting things to myself, about myself and my personality, just putting it on paper, is how I deal with emotional pain.