Hip-hop is all over the planet.

My first Grammy wasn't even in a jazz category, but of course I was really excited. 'Rockit' was the beginning of kind of a new era for the whole hip-hop movement.

It's not easy to play in a framework that requires simplicity and to tastefully find ways to interject the kind of freedom that we have in playing jazz.

All you have to do is play one note. But it needs to be the right note.

I've been curious ever since I was a little kid.

When I was six, my best friend's parents bought him a piano. My mother noticed that every time I would go to his house, the first thing I would say to him was 'Levester' - His name was Levester - I said, 'Levester, can I go play your piano?' So, on my 7th birthday, my parents bought me a piano.

I like to be on the edge, on the cutting edge, or be into the unknown, into the territory where I have to depend on being in the moment and depending on my instincts.

Being vulnerable is allowing yourself to trust. That's hard for a lot of people to do. They feel a lot more secure if they kind of put walls around themselves. Then they don't have to trust anybody but themselves.

Back in the day for me was a great time in my life - I was in my 20s. Most people refer to their experiences in their twenties as being a highlight in their life. It's a period of time where you often develop your own way, your own sound, your own identity, and that happened with me, when I was with a great teacher - Miles Davis.

Buddhism has turned me on to my humanness, and is challenging my humanness so that I can become more human.

Music is not the only reason that I practice Buddhism anymore because it has affected my whole life.

One of the greatest experiences I ever had was listening to a conversation with Joni Mitchell and Wayne Shorter. Just to hear them talking, my mouth was open. They understand each other perfectly, and they make these leaps and jumps because they don't have to explain anything.

My father was really good with math. It's a funny thing, I don't remember my father or my mother being so mechanical-minded. My father always wanted to be a doctor, but he came from a really poor family in Georgia, and there was no way he was going to be a doctor.

I hope that I can make good music out of whatever genre I go into. Just to prove to myself that I can.

You can practice to learn a technique, but I'm more interested in conceiving of something in the moment.

Without wisdom, the future has no meaning, no valuable purpose.

When I was coming up, I practiced all the time because I thought if I didn't I couldn't do my best.

The value of music is to be able to play one note at the right time in the right way.

The value of music is not dazzling yourself and others with technique.

The thing that we possess, that machines don't, is the ability to exhibit wisdom.

The music becomes something that is its own entity.

See, there were certain rules I'd always used, and people like Trane, they would break those rules.

One thing that attracted me to Buddhism was the support for this larger vision of values.

One thing I like about jazz is that it emphasized doing things differently from what other people were doing.