Music is an opportunity to say every single thing that you want to say. People will pore over whatever you say and however you say it and, for me, it represents complete freedom of speech.

[YSL creative director] Hedi [Slimane] is a music-obsessed guy. I might've originally met him through Sky.

I guess I do feel the need to repent. I do feel like I owe the world a great album. I don't know why I feel that way. I just do.

People are going to be way more patient listening to what I have to say now. I don't have five seconds to get their attention, I have five minutes. That's a huge window.

It's this funny thing now: You sign up to be a musician because you want to write music, but you don't spend your time writing music. Instead, you go around the world selling the music you've already made.

I've already had a hard time dealing with some of the trappings of success and turned to some pretty stereotypical escape routes - ways of escaping my own reality and falling into some pretty clichéd situations.

I had these glorified ideas about San Francisco and its drug culture - I thought inspiration would just hit me and I would get these San Francisco drugs in my system and all of a sudden an amazing record would come out. But that's not really what happened at all.