All my stuff is pretty seamless - like now, while I'm touring [Yesterday I Sang The Blues], today I'm going to go in the studio, I'm writing my next one. For me it's continual.
Jose James[Billie Holiday] was keeping it super real, and you can feel that to this day. Everything that she sang, she believed in. So I had to pick songs that I felt the same about.
Jose JamesI've sort of realized there's a definite pattern to my output at this point: there's an album that everybody sort of loves, that's a real balance between the old and new, like The Dreamer or No Beginning No End, like a blend of jazz and hip-hop, or r&b and soul and hip-hop.
Jose JamesI feel like, in many ways, Billie Holiday's still very under-appreciated as an artist. People focus on her voice, and all of the very recognizable vocal things that she does, which are great. But I wanted to, with this project, start the conversation again about her as a radical feminist, as a civil rights activist - taking a stance. And also just [her] being a non-conformist.
Jose JamesI'm listening to a lot of Drake, and a lot of Frank Sinatra just because it's his centennial also. I'm going to be doing some tributes to him this year. I love that Beck album. It was funny to me because my two favorite albums of the year were definitely the Beyonce album and the Beck album.
Jose James