When I hear the words jazz pianist, that just means I have the skills to do most things. Because to be a jazz pianist, even to be a bad jazz pianist, you have to be pretty good.

Jazz is like a big secret club. The mainstream media doesn't pay any attention to it, it's like 1 percent of the music market - no one cares. Why? Because the majority of jazz is old.

Jazz is a state of mind. There's no boundaries.

I think there's good music out there. I just think that radio stations don't play it.

There is a modern take on certain things you can do that, to me, is still jazz.

I grew up in church. That's how most young African American musicians learn how to perform. You could be six years old and playing organ or drums in front of thousands or hundreds of people.

A lot of times, jazz musicians try to educate people. What other genre does that?

I'm not really married to the craft of jazz - I'm married to me, and my style, and whatever I produce.

If you really dissect hip-hop you will find a whole lot of Charles Mingus, Ron Carter, Ahmad Jamal, a lot of classic jazz samples in there.

"Cannonball Adderley said, 'First 20 minutes we'll jazz out, then the last hour it's gonna be songs that people paid to see.' Which is why he was driving a Rolls-Royce."

It's the repetitive thing that brings space. That's one of the things I love secretly about hip-hop. Jazz doesn't have that element. It changes every bar, nothing is ever the same.

This is home and home is not something you remember, it is something you see every day and every moment.

As a rock star, I have two instincts, I want to have fun, and I want to change the world. I have a chance to do both.

In my forties, my optimism was boundless. I had really good health and tremendous success which allowed me to do anything I wanted.

In exchange for ten years of being on top, I'm gonna end up in prison or I'm gonna end up dead, and there's something fascinating about that.

We live in a country that talks about being the home of the brave and the land of the free, and we have the highest incarceration rate in the world.

You learn from the good, you learn from the bad.

I didn't want to go to sleep knowing I would just wake up in the morning.

When you notice light seeping into your coffin, it's hard to go on pretending that you're still dead.

I saw what happened when a dictator was allowed to take over a piece of a country and the country went down the tubes. And I saw the opposite during the war when America joined the fight.

A man without trust is a man without life.