After every war, there was a significant change in the music, and I can understand how that happened. If you participate in protecting the country, you think you can be part of it, but you come back home and it's worse than ever.

My earliest memories are being pinned to a fence with a switchblade.

When I was about five or seven years old my mother was placed in a mental institution and so we were with our father who worked very hard, and we had to figure a lot of things out.

I've been driven all my life by a spirit of adventure and a criminal level of optimism. I believed in my dreams because they were my only option. The people who make it to the top are addicted to their calling. You have to honor the gift God has given you. The people who get the call are the ones who'd be doing whatever it is they love, even if they weren't being paid.

The climate in the '50s and '60s for black performers or black people in the entertainment business was atrocious. It was atrocious.

I found this out over the years, that racism is a thinly veiled disguise over economics and money. It really is.

Arts is just as important as military defense, you know? Emotional defense is just as important.