Jazz is the greatest American art form and our greatest export. We don't pay attention to the youth of jazz, don't stoke the fires creatively for the youth coming up. I feel like jazz musicians became too much of purists - with Donald Byrd doing funk jazz in the '70s.

Honestly, you have to take care of yourself. That's probably something I have learned on the road.

My parents are my biggest influences. My parents and my city. Brooklyn, New York, New York City, the community I grew up. I don't feel like I'm special in that. I feel like that's everybody.

Let me finish my music, and let me present it the way I want to present it. And then share it, put it online, do whatever you want to do after that.

I look at the deejay thing as a tier thing. If I'm not going to compete on that level, I'm just going to do it as a hobby.

We get high on all types of drugs when, all you really need is Love

I think the biggest problem in our country is mass incarceration and the prison-industrial complex. From the Rockefeller drug laws to stand your ground to stop and frisk, all these are pointing people, especially and disproportionately black and brown people, towards the criminal-justice system. It's depleting whole generations of people.