If you really dissect hip-hop you will find a whole lot of Charles Mingus, Ron Carter, Ahmad Jamal, a lot of classic jazz samples in there.

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.

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

I think there's good music out there. I just think that radio stations don't play it.

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.

I think there's beauty in repetition. And that's part of my culture and African culture as well: repeated things, mantra. It's spiritual, it's meditation, it's Buddhism, it's praying, it's all these things.

It's funny, now that we have Twitter and Facebook and stuff, you can really see how you affect fans. Before all that, fans couldn't tell you exactly how they feel, unless they came up after a show, and even then you can't stand there and talk to everybody in the audience. So it's nice to see people tweet me and say, "Your music has changed my life," or "I had my baby to your music," or "I got married to your music." I've heard so many things, and it's amazing to hear people's stories and how you affect their life.