After I moved with my mother to St. Louis, my older sister and I went to see Ike Turner, who was the hottest then. His music charged me. I was never attracted to him, but I wanted to sing with his band.

We want to get this good music to as many people as possible because I think it heals, it soothes, I think music is incredibly important, especially in today's chaos.

Listening is more important than anything else because that's what music is. Somebody is playing something and you're receiving it. It is sending and receiving.

I've had an experience through music that has touched almost every part of me. It educated me in ways that I didn't get educated in school. So we try to lay on a bit of that, through being funny, being serious, playing hard.

I feel like if I won an award and I was giving my speech and the music started, that's all I'd remember, the humiliation I felt when the music started. It would mar the entire experience for me.

Pop music has been all but relegated to the remainder bin at MTV and VH1, where high-maintenance concoctions such as Paris Hilton, Flavor Flav, and Hulk Hogan's biohazard clan of bleached specimens provide endless hours of death-hastening diversion.

The first time I arrived in Hollywood for the Grammy Awards, I thought I'd bump into people who mattered, such as Ry Cooder or Randy Newman. I was disappointed to see the people I'd always thought of as pop stars. They would charge around the stage rather than enjoy the music.

You can realise God as you progress in music; nothing in between.

I can't make Based God music all the time. The Based God is something that is better than Lil B and better than Brandon McCartney; he's something that I aspire to be.

I think I got turned onto The Beach Boys for the first time with the 'Endless Summer' album in 1974. The power of that music still, to this day, bypasses the brain and goes straight to the heart. You don't have to think about it; it's something that you feel.