Witnessing the extreme poverty in remote parts of Affrica can make you feel sad and powerless until you realize how little it takes to change these people's lives fundamentally in sustainable ways.

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.

It's really about making the best music you can make. It's really about working hard.

Experience is a great teacher.

To me, as a musician, there aren't any boundaries genre-wise as far as what can you listen to to inspire you.

I'm craving more soul, I'm craving more truth, I'm craving more socially - just people that are aware of what's going on in the world.

I don't really marinate in anybody's album because I don't really want to sound like anybody else when I put my album out. So I'd rather not even be tempted to listen to a bunch of other stuff with any degree of emersion in it, cause I just don't want to sound like anything else, so I kinda focus on my own music.