I named my album Year of the Gentleman. Just looking at how the essence of what it is to be a gentleman is very much lacking nowadays. Someone said to me that chivalry is dead, and I hated to have to agree, but it's true.

My mom was the picture of the blue-collar mom: Two and three and four jobs to make sure that me and my sister never needed, that was her thing

That is the difference between a good song and a bad song lyrically - if you can listen to it and put yourself in that place, or see that person in that place, normally it is a pretty good song.

Every song I've ever written has been based in reality, based in fact, things that happen to me.

If you want to be successful, you have to be the best person doing it. And in order to be the best person doing it, you have to get your work ethic right and keep going.

Everybody wants me to be the (guy) who's (sleeping with) every celebrity woman in the industry. Everybody wants me to be this (guy) in the club, popping 17 bottles just because. Everybody wants me to be Diddy, and that's not me.

My style is mainly about comfort. It has to be comfortable, it has to lay right on me, know what I mean?