I think at any point, as an artist, whatever the medium - just having an audience means the world.

I feel that as artists - whatever your medium is - I feel that we're watching what goes on around us and we take what we don't see, or we don't hear, or we don't feel and we do something that speaks of it; more about it, for it, or against it - whatever our perspective is - that's what our job is.

I would say that the most complex style of singing comes from India. Real, classical Indian music produces probably the best technical and natural singers in the world, just because the patterns and the inflection are so complex in how the style moves and what it requires vocally. I think the best classical singers come from India.

I mean, there's plenty of artists who are making R&B music, but because of their ethnicity, it's considered something else.

I think there's a huge parallel that affects my musical taste, and connections that have to do with my ethnic diversity and my musical tastes and the diversity of that. And it's interesting that, growing up on the circuit, it posed such a challenge, not only to me deciding what my identity was amongst my peers, but then on the music side, it was like trying to explain or convince people especially in the music industry that there was a place for what I was trying to do. But at the same time, I think it has a lot to do with timing and even me, like, understanding it.

I'm a firm believer that when children have a strong conviction about something, it's often because there's some powerful experience from a past life. Something that they didn't get to fulfill.

I think what I'm trying to build is a reputation for evolving and for change. Because of the rate of information that we have access to at this point, it's almost hard not to be ever-growing.