Art and culture and all of these things - they really matter. They shape your individuality.

When I worked with my uncle, I loved the fact that jazz music demanded that you use your own unique approach.

My mother was actually born in Toledo and raised in Detroit.

When I found out how music made me feel and how my singing made other people feel, that's when I decided this is what I wanted to do.

Your voice is not your instrument. Your voice is the character that you build, your innermost feelings, the things that you want to say, and your instrument is the vehicle that you use to carry the message.

My friend Harry Belafonte is an activist and musician, an extraordinary man who has dedicated his life to human rights. He taught me the power of words and that music can be used to heal and educate people.

Jazz is such a living art form. It happens right in the moment. You weave a story by changing certain elements and components.

Lizz Wright, we call her lovingly 'Amazing Grace.' She has a folk and gospel kind of approach to the music, and she writes beautiful lyrics and songs. She's like this balm that is really full and very rich and deep.

I love New York City because there's something to do 24/7, something that will make you see things in a whole different light. Like they say, it's the city that never sleeps.

My demographic is very broad. Once they come, they had an idea about jazz, and then they hear me, and they come back with sisters, brothers, and kids. My audience looks like America to me.

I think jazz is the foundation for a lot of great musicians, and then after that, you know, it's this broad expression of things that really have influenced and addressed your life.

I loved singing something like 'I've Got My Eye On You' when it's really about the FBI. It turns a love song into something else!

When I first heard Nina Simone, her naked truth shocked me. Whenever she sang, it felt like lightning bolts in my soul. Every song was like a movie, a unique and very different vignette.

I come from a family of musicians.

I think the only way for you to grow and evolve is to keep listening, keep moving forward, keep jumping in and trying to experience.

Go out into the world with your passion and love for what you do, and just never give up.

Even in a world with much sadness, at its essence, life is beautiful.

For me, music is a byproduct of this process - the human process - and the fact that I've managed to eke out a career with it is a happy accident more than any strategy.

The album 'Physicist,' I erased all the work that I had done halfway through. I think that's probably why that contributed to that album being sort of sub-par for me, just because by the time I had to go back and do it, I was just over it.

I really like female singers; I've got zero interest in working with male singers. Any male voice I need to do, I can do.

I play keyboards and Pro Tools, if you want to look at it as an instrument.

I think I've been playing bass for as long as I've played guitar, and I love them both.

I think a lot of the fun of making records, for me, is making each one of them a situation. For example, with 'Ghost,' I found a group of people that had an energy together, and we kind of did it in a cabin somewhere.

I made 'Epicloud' for the people that have listened to what I've done because I really think that this style of music fits well into my personal daily life and hopefully others.