I was with Miles Davisfor a couple of years as his bass player, and it was a beautiful experience. After two years I said to him, "Listen, man, I want to leave your band." He goes, "Why?" I said, "Because I want to develop not just as a bass player, but I want to get more into composition, into producing, and I'm working with Aretha Franklin and Luther Vandross and all these guys, and I want to really see how much I can grow and develop." He actually gave me his blessing.

I'm 13 to 17, 18 years old; I thought that's what the world was like. It never occurred to me that this was a very unusual period in music history. So I went on assuming that one day I'm going to have my band like my heroes had their own band. So people ask me this question all the time - they go, "Bass is basically a background instrument." The other thing is that in urban music, Black music, the bass has a much higher profile.

I got so many emails and text messages, my phone blew up because it couldn't handle everybody. It's like almost being at your own funeral because of the way the headline read.

I was already playing the clarinet and the piano. My father's a piano player. But I wanted to play in a funk band, and the clarinet wasn't fit. So you was "Hey, man, can I sit in?" They're like, "No, man." So I started fooling around with the bass.

Luther Vandross was doing fine, but he said, "Man, I want to do my own project." So he got us all to do a demo, and that demo was "Never Too Much." It took him a year and a half to get signed, because he didn't have a gimmick. The record companies were looking for his gimmick. They said, "What's your gimmick?" He said, "I sing. That's my gimmick." Anyway, he finally got signed and the record was released, and the rest was history.

I revisited some music that I had written for Miles Devis. I used to work with Miles in the '80s. We did an album - "Tutu," that was really successful for Miles, and a couple of years ago we did "Tutu Revisited," and this is where we played the music from "Tutu." But I knew Miles would absolutely hate it if we just got on the stage and played the music the same way we did it in the '80s.

I think jazz is a beautiful, democratic music. It encourages musicians with very strong, and many times, very different points of view to work together as a team while, at the same time, giving them the space to express their individuality. It's a very important art form and can be used as a model for different cultures to work together.