The fun part about collaborating is that you naturally just bounce off each other's energy and learn off each other.

Sometimes I start just on the piano with a melody or musical idea that kind of leads me to certain lyrics.

Music was my life...It was everything to me, even though I was in school majoring in English. I was still very focused on music and always finding ways to perform, so that was what set me up to want to become a recording artist.

I always saw myself as a singer-songwriter, a solo-artist, that's why working with other artists was never satisfying for me.

Anybody under the age of forty knows hip-hop, gospel and R&B pretty well, and it's all a part of what we consider to be 'black music.' There is a natural synergy between the three.

At the end of the day, there's only a few major stars in the music business, and then there's all these people that are aspiring to be that.

It's important for us to fight for certain changes that need to happen. And one of those issues that I really care about is education. But also another one is incarceration.