I really love rap music. I grew up in the '80s and '90s with Public Enemy, N.W.A., LL Cool J - I'm a hip-hop encyclopedia. But I got kind of frustrated with the chauvinistic side of rap music, the one that makes it hard to write songs about love and relationships.

Gary Numan had a huge influence on both my music and my style. He had his own unique fashion sense - that futuristic space style. It was out there.

Hip-hop was my first real love, one that was my own and wasn't my parents' music. Initially, I was inspired by hip-hop fashion. Over the years, I kept the hip-hop sensibility, but make it my own.

Nowhere on earth has more soul than Detroit.

I grew up in the '80s and '90s listening to Public Enemy and Mobb Deep and the Smashing Pumpkins. I don't even know what it was like in the '60s - I wasn't alive then - so the Mayer Hawthorne sound is taking what I can learn from the classics, and blending it with my hip-hop DJ and producer background and punk-rock bands that I played in as a kid.

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day and I definitely have a hearty breakfast before I do anything.

Barry White is my musical hero. He was the guy who you danced to in the club and then when you took your lady home to the bedroom, you listened to him there, too! That's who I always wanted to be - the guy who was always there.