I'm trying to just keep pushing on the things I've been wanting to do in my life and in music. And think of new things to do!
I think the open mind is the one that's reachable.
The thing about hip-hop is, like, that the instruments were taken out of schools. But - you might have taken the instruments out of schools, but we'll take the records and sing over them!
We do have the power to kind of make this world what we want it to be. But we have to just choose to do it ourselves and not wait for someone else.
My hope is that witnessing the beautiful harmony created by merging different musical melodies will help people realize the beauty in our own differences.
Someone like Donald Trump can't control the way I show love to my brother. He can't control the way I feel about my neighbors.
I feel like I'm musically free to do what I want.
It's either, like, 'Your album was the first jazz album I listened to,' or, like, 'My friend took me to this show, and I've never been to a jazz show before, but, man, I'm so happy I came. I can't wait to go home and see more.' And you can feel it in the crowd, too. You can see the groups of people that don't really know what to expect.
Isaac Smith sounded like Curtis Fuller, Corey Hogan sounded like Sonny Rollins, Terrace Martin sounded like Jackie McLean. Already, at 13, 14, 15 years old.
So much good music has been looked over because of preconceived notions of genre.
I like living on that edge, musically. I like a bit of insecurity and that feeling of not really knowing what's going to happen.
American music comes from the same tree, but sometimes we get to these places in history where we forget where things come from, and they get compartmentalized.
My dad was very much a Pan-Africanist and instilled in me and my siblings a want for that knowledge.
Jazz is a part of me.
There's this notion that music has to be confined to some small, simple place to be popular, something I never believed.
When you're making music, you're creeping up on your heart and pouring it out into something.
As musicians, we have one of the greatest tools of bringing people together in music.
We've now got a whole generation of jazz musicians who have been brought up with hip-hop. We've grown up alongside rappers and DJs; we've heard this music all our life. We are as fluent in J Dilla and Dr Dre as we are in Mingus and Coltrane.
I never had a problem moving between jazz and hip-hop.
People like to compartmentalise music, especially African-American music, but it's really one thing. One very wide thing. I mean, it's like all those great records by Marvin Gaye and James Brown back in the day - there are tonnes of jazz musicians playing on them.
