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.

Even an independent label is looking for a hit, they're not looking for a record that's not gonna do well.

I'm at a loss for words. But even my loss is amplified.

Skip the religion and politics, head straight to the compassion. Everything else is a distraction.

I'm spinning records and I look across the restaurant and I see somebody who looks Asian. And I'm like, "Yo, that looks like Yoko Ono." I'm like, oh, I can just meet - that's going to be great. Then I look carefully and I'm like, "That's not Yoko Ono, that's Bruno Mars." And it was Bruno Mars. That just happened recently. I was bugging out. Because that was totally not Yoko Ono at all.

They ask me what I'm writing for - I'm writing to show you what we're fighting for.