D'Angelo could sing the phonebook and it would sound good.

I mean, my wife is always like - I don't write lyrics. So I couldn't, like, really technically write a song for anyone. I could write a very nice instrumental. So she always sort of gives me a hard time because it's just such a ridiculously impossible standard to live up to, that your step-dad wrote that song for your mom.

Making music is a lifestyle; go to the studio and sit in front of your computer, drum machine or guitar for 10 hours a day. The good stuff will come.

And sometimes, I'd be allowed to be hanging out in the studio, which I just loved kind of, like, being in the room with these big recording desks, with all these, like, buttons and knobs and watching the guys use them.

Stevie Wonder doing 'We Can Work It Out' by the Beatles is one of my favorite records of all time.

Dave Guy, the trumpet player, is an incredible musician. He came into the studio one day, and they had just cut a cover of "Sign, Seal, Deliver" for something with Sharon Jones, and I just was blown away by how they got that sonic. I mean, it was just so much the real deal.

I never studied jazz technically; I just know and love the music.