I fell in love with Paris the first time I went.

When I'm in the studio, I write the music, I play the different instruments, I produce it, I arrange it, and it's a self-indulgent exercise. It's the way I make my music. And when I'm acting, I get to leave myself behind, which is a relief. I get to collaborate with a director; I respect the director's medium and all the actors and actresses. So at the end of the day, it's about a character and it's about a director's vision. It's a really good balance for being so intense and alone in my personal process of making music.

I come in with this rock 'n' roll-oriented music, and it's not black enough . . . I've always had to deal with this black-white thing.

I find cooking to be the one thing that relaxes me. I don't get to do it often . . .

I do my best to try to keep God with me on a personal level. It's my belief that God really wants a personal relationship with us.

Fly Away changed my life. There are certain songs that do. When I won the Grammy, I was in Paris. I sort of forgot about it.

I've always been into films. I've been offered lots of films but they've always been these very stereotypical roles. They wanted me to play some gangster or street guy, or pimp, drug addict.