Gospel music was the thing that inspired me as a child growing up on a cotton farm, where work was drudgery and it was so hard that when I was in the field I sang all the time. Usually gospel songs because they lifted me up above that black dirt.

Everything in life is not all beautiful, not all fun. There is lots of killing and drugs. To me, a perfect album talks about the hard stuff and the fun and caring stuff.

The worst things in life come free to us.

Believe it or not, I thank my mom for how she raised me in a neighborhood where I had to jump and chase daily. It only made me what I am today.

Songs should follow the state of mind of the actor on screen. It can be grammatically perfect, you know, with all those embellishments that the ustads are good at, only if you're singing for a film on, say, the life of Tansen.

I wrote most of 'Hello in There' in a relay box, which looks like a mail box, only bigger. Sometimes, it was so cold and windy on my mail route that I'd go inside the relay box and eat a sandwich, just to get away from the wind. I remember working on 'Hello in There' inside the relay box.