My fan base is extremely random. It's the 14-year-old white kid sitting next to your auntie from St. Luke's Baptist Church, to the 20-year-old Black girl who probably would go to a Rihanna concert, but she's coming to my show.

A lot of times, jazz musicians try to educate people. What other genre does that?

I do feel a responsibility because most people like me that are my age or younger, they don't quite make it over to the jazz side. They flirt with it, but they don't quite marry it.

You’ve got to be uncomfortable and rise to different occasions in order to become your best. No one is born a hero, but things happen and your response makes you a hero. It’s instinctual, it’s something that you may not even realize is there.

A lot of people in the jazz community are looking at how much notoriety we're getting. And we're an inspiration to a lot of young people, because now there's something new they can aim for that's in their grasp. Because a lot of times when you attend a jazz college it's all about the history, none of the teachers there are forward-thinking, for the most part, so they don't teach you how to be yourself and embrace the music around you.

It's the repetitive thing that brings space. That's one of the things I love secretly about hip-hop. Jazz doesn't have that element. It changes every bar, nothing is ever the same.

I grew up in church. That's how most young African American musicians learn how to perform. You could be six years old and playing organ or drums in front of thousands or hundreds of people.