For the last few years, it's been so chic for everybody to be miserable. Like if you're in with the cool crowd, you can't be happy.

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.

My mother passed at the end of the Circus tour. After that I really needed to take some time and just chill out and get my head together.

What motivates it is life. Life is everything. Life influences my music and brings it forth. Life is always changing, so I'm always hearing new music.

That's a big gift when people say to you that a song helped them or brought them to some place in their life where they needed to be.

Personal relationship with God is not all just the ceremony and not the religion of doing something because you were told that's what you have to do; it's relationships, it's like we have relationships with our families, with our friends, with our loved ones.

I'm half Jewish, I'm half black, I look in-between. I dress funny. I play all these different styles of music on one record. It's like, What is he doing?