For me, the creative process for me always starts in a personal place. I step away from my iPod or any records or CDs.

What I will say is that Naz and I are not together just because we like to hang out. The purpose is finding someone that you can spend the rest of your life with, for me anyways.

All the best times in music were rebellious. I mean, even like Elvis, people didn't want their daughters paying attention to him. He was considered too sexual!

Which not peace for the man who is forced to go to war, for he will find his peace. But wish peace for the man who goes to war willingly, for he will never find his peace.

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 embrace that I'm different. That I'm unique.

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