If you look at the guys in the '70s, like Led Zeppelin, they had bigger planes than we do, they had more money. But they weren't singing about it.

We should take time out to really love; we should take time out to find out who we are.

I was an actor when I was a teenager and it could have been the direction that I headed in. But music and my relationship with music is quite deep, and it really is the nucleus of my creativity. So I gave up acting so I could pursue music fully, and I never thought about really going back. And then [director] Lee Daniels met me and wanted to work with me, and that's how it started.

We've always just gotten up there and played. We don't have any dancers, we don't have all that stuff going on, we just get up there and play.

I don't play the tuba.

You can't even sing or play an instrument, so you just scream instead. You're living for an image, so you got five hundred women in your bed.

It doesn't take a lot to get me motivated. I'm a studio rat. When I was in high school and I would walk into a recording studio, it felt like this magical place, this temple, this womb that I could escape into.