If I was a singer who won those Grammys, I'd be gracing all the magazine covers... I barely got asked to do an interview.

Instead of hearing, "Oh, he's good," I'd rather hear, "Wow, you changed my feelings today, you made me feel different."

Sometimes I'll write a song first and then I'm like, "Oh this person will be great on this song." But there are some artists I know what want, like off the top I knew I wanted Brandy and Faith Evans. Their music is like the soundtrack to my life, so it was a personal thing for me. So once they said yes, I wrote songs specifically for them.

For the most part, 99 percent of jazz is boring; you've heard it before. People aren't doing anything creative that's extremely modern. They tend to always be like "Let's do a tribute to Miles Davis!" All the new albums are tributes to history. It becomes too much at a certain point, it leaves us waving like "Hello? I'm alive, I'm here!" You know? So I really do feel like it needs some spice, it needs to be relevant to today's times, today's people, today's sound.

I think the people who are saying jazz has to sound a particular way, or "what you're doing isn't jazz," are just scared because they can't do it. A lot of them just aren't talented enough to do anything new, honestly. It's the people who are talented enough and who have the open mind and who are forward-thinkers are the ones who are doing something new. You tend to hate on what you can't produce.

Jazz is like a big secret club. The mainstream media doesn't pay any attention to it, it's like 1 percent of the music market - no one cares. Why? Because the majority of jazz is old.

When I hear the words jazz pianist, that just means I have the skills to do most things. Because to be a jazz pianist, even to be a bad jazz pianist, you have to be pretty good.