Sometimes, I even learn new techniques from my students. Although I am still a student at the Art Institute, I think that I have learnt a lot from the classes that I have already taken.

I feel like kids that grew up in New York City or in L.A. were exposed to all these subcultures and subgenres, whereas I was only exposed to the poppiest of pop music so I never had this negative connotation towards pop music. That's not South African music having an effect on me, but just how international music was filtered through South Africa affected me. It gave me a not-negative connotation towards pop music growing up.

I was very conceptual about what I was doing; I had the first five albums planned out, and all the songs on every album, and the artwork. I always had these ambitious musical projects in mind.

Generally I'll keep 95% of what I sing on that first scratch vocal take. Sometimes that idea will ferment for a long time, and sometimes I"ll be close enough to my studio and have enough time (kind of rare these days) to go and work on the idea. Not every song is super easy though.

We lived in a suburb in Johannesburg, which is a massive city of about 8 million people, and my parents would drive me to school every day and over the weekend I would go to the mall and then occasionally on Safari. Pretty normal stuff, apart from the Safari.

You may be surprised to know that growing up, I wanted to be a writer of children's books.

Don't get me wrong, I have the utmost respect for anyone who has the nerve to even attempt to do music today, but this is just about what excites me.