It's good to be surrounded by black folks. Black folks are music.

In our music, in our everyday life, there are so many negative things. Why not have something positive and stamp it with blackness?

Actually, music gave me the support when I needed it. I would never have gone to college unless I'd gotten a piano scholarship. And now I'm so glad I got to learn to play the cello, which is a different experience, you're flexing a different muscle, but it's beautiful because it is music.

Well, the album 'Intuition' is out and just went platinum officially. So I think to have the music doing what it's doing right now, man, it's the ultimate. Nobody is really selling records out there but we are at a million records and we dropped it at Christmas, so we are just trying to get that thing to like two million, you know.

I went to college on a classical piano scholarship. My grandmother made me practice one full hour a day. Every day. Man. I thought all she wanted was for me not to have any fun. Next thing you know, you have a career in music. Now, not everybody's going to go on and be Mozart or Michael Jackson. But music makes you smarter.

I want to thank my daughter, who told me, 'If you don't win, Dad, you're still good,' ... who taught me how to act.