It wasn't that I wanted to ride out the storm, believe me,

To me, the only category I'm in is music,

What he took from me was nothing, because he can't take my spirit, he can't take my soul. My soul is New Orleans.

There are many, many heroes that have come out this. People talking about what I did. I didn't do nothing. Everybody did something.

When they said the storm was coming, I barricaded myself in the house and prayed. Many people in my neighborhood stayed because they didn't have resources. We did not stay because we wanted to be looters or martyrs. We stayed because we had to.

I had no money, ... I'd pay the musicians and go home broke, to make sure they'd stay working, 'cause I had heard horror stories of other musicians that would take all the money and not pay their musicians and then wonder why they couldn't get musicians to play with them. I wasn't gonna become one of those musicians.