No particular music makes me feel nostalgic. If it's great, it just keeps me in the present moment. That level of music is like a classic story, like the Iliad-something so perfect it can never be old.

My thing is, once you start to put a backbeat on your music or something that has a machine in it, you have popularity, but you lose the flexibility. And you lose a richness.

I try to put a lot of our music in my music - by that I mean of American music.

For Black people, we're one of the only groups of people that for some reason to express love of yourself, in some ways, is misconstrued as a dislike for someone else.

It's important to address young people in the reopening of New Orleans. In rebuilding, let's revisit the potential of American democracy and American glory.

When I say "our," I definitely mean all of America. It's not less pertinent for you because it comes from a Black person, just like a great achievement by an Anglo American is less important.

It's like we're suffering from an identity crisis, and that identity is in our arts and the fact that we don't find it chief amongst our agendas to teach our kids who we are as a nation and the battles we've had on this ground and how they've been successfully resolved. We can't enjoy the fruits of the labor of our ancestors.