When I write, I don't really focus on duets or anything like that, or whether I'm going to feature this or that rapper. I just focus on just making a great song and figure out the rest later.

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.

My first big break came with Lauryn Hill on a track called Everything is Everything, I played piano on that track way back in 1998.

The best training is to play by ear: trial by fire.

Mass incarceration is a policy that's kind of built up over the last four decades and it's destroyed families and communities, and something we need to change. And it's fallen disproportionally on black and brown communities, especially black communities, and it's kind of a manifestation of structural racism.

I was a busy kid in high school - a little bit of an overachiever, I guess. Prom king was kind of silly, but the rest of the stuff was important to me.

There's so much music out there, and so many different styles that I've been influenced by, so each album reflects some of that knowledge or influence that I've had.