Respect, my brother, nothing but respect, man.

I was looking for Quincy Jones, that's who I was obsessed with. Watching Mike [Jackson], I always knew that I had to be a showman on stage, because when people come to you live you always want them to come back. You gotta give them something to remember.

I don't see no more Billie Holidays, no more Marvin Gayes, no more Smokey Robinsons. I don't even see no more Nirvanas.

When you find the talent, it's always raw, and when you put the talent in the formula, you get the Knocks.

It's important, when you see darkness, to understand that there's light ahead of that, and I'm the living testimony of that, you dig?

No matter how far you go, if you can't go back to the essence, you're not sayin' nothin'. The essence for me is hip-hop. But the hip-hop community I came up in isn't a loyal community.

I was a jazz major in high school, in an all-jazz band. No matter what I do, it features my musical influences.