Experience is a great teacher.
My style is pretty clean, classic, and elegant, with some elements to make it a little funkier. If you see me on a normal day, I'm usually in a T-shirt and jeans, maybe with some cool sneakers, but I'm pretty basic.
I ate some pretty funky, authentic Chinese food in Hong Kong. There was an egg from some bird that's not a chicken. I can't remember what it was, but it was green and brown and not very tasty.
Sometimes there's that perfect moment when the crowd, the music, the energy of the room come together in a way that brings me to tears.
I like cool jackets - a nice fall or winter coat. You can get a lot of use out of it, and you'll wear it frequently, so it can really set the tone of your uniform for the season.
Soul is about authenticity. Soul is about finding the things in your life that are real and pure.
When we see people that are impoverished and people who are dealt an unfair hand, then if we have the power to help them, we should try to do that.
I sang 'All Of Me' at the wedding. I sang 'Stay With You' from my first album. And then Stevie Wonder came up and sang 'Ribbon In the Sky.' It was impromptu... It was cool... He's always been a friend and a mentor to me.
I like things that feel like they're timeless and really well made and tailored... things that make me feel confident when I leave the house.
I was an English major in college who concentrated in African-American literature and culture. So I read quite a few slave narratives and stories of escape, and I grew up in Ohio, which was a common stop on the Underground Railroad.
Dr. King was unpopular while he was alive - he's only popular now because he's dead and not a threat to anyone.
I was homeschooled for several years.
Well, I was always a bit of a political junkie. Even as a kid I would read biographies of presidents and of civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King and Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington.
With Tinder and all these other things, there's always this kind of illusion with infinite choices. There's something very cool about saying, 'Oh, I actually really care about this person, and I want to commit to loving this person and being loyal to this person.' You can't get that from the kind of infinite multiple choices that are out there.
Well, Jeff Buckley for me is one of the greatest singers I've ever heard. And the reason why is he has an amazing range, amazing emotional power in his voice. And the music he put around it also just had this passion and this soul to it and this spirit to it that very few artists have, and he passed at a very young age.
People like Dick Gregory, Paul Robeson, Harry Belafonte and Nina Simone show me what the definition of an artist is - it isn't just to make art but to speak truth to what's happening, speak beauty into the world, speak love into the world and also... get involved.
When I write, I don't really focus on duets or anything like that or whether I'm going to feature this or that rapper. I just focus on just making a great song and figure out the rest later.
In terms of the technology I use the most, it's probably a tie between my Blackberry and my MacBook Pro laptop. That's how I communicate with the rest of the world and how I handle all the business I have to handle.
As a politician, you have to deal with someone wanting you to fail every day. I think I prefer being in a situation where generally people are rooting for me, and if they aren't rooting for me, they aren't out there to see my downfall. I respect the people who have the stomach for it.
I think the thing about love is that even though the things around us change, we as human beings, a lot of the ways we interact, and the ways we love each other is timeless. It requires trust, honesty, commitment, romance, and physical chemistry.
