I'm the guy who loves being in the supporting cast.

Through music you learn not to care about the color of someone's skin.

Whether it is successful or not is not the exercise for me. It is not up to me. It is out of my hands now. I am not going to in two years have hindsight and say I made a big mistake.

It is not fun singing about losing somebody like that, but at the same time it was easy to write because the memories were so real and vivid and so much a part of who I am.

We all get caught up in the process, especially when you have a wave of success. But to me, being creative is not about rehashing everything you've done over and over. It's to continue to grow, continue to get better.

It really does take a lot of time to make records, to be in the studio and do all that stuff.

Everything I've done feels like I'm just as much a part of it as if I was the producer. It's still the same job: all of us together figuring out the common good for a song. That's the only thing that matters. It's not like, "I'm the boss, and I'm gonna tell you what to play."