Things that would shock us years ago are like nothing now.

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.

I wanted to make something that sounded very pure, organic, and personal. I wanted to make music that was timeless.

You need to open up so that more comes through. And you can just feel that when your ego is not in the way and when you're letting it be what it wants to be. You have to let it be what it wants to be as opposed to what you think it should be.

When I was a kid and I bought a record, I ripped that thing open, I wanted to know who was playing what, what studio it was cut at, who was the string arranger, who was the engineer.

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

We're getting so pulled in by computers and technology, and our kids have their face in the computers all day. The human relationship is being diminished by this.