Whether you want to go into music, whether you want to be a lawyer, whether you want to be President of the United States, the bottom line for all of you is that you have got to get your education.
The bottom line is, I tend to be going back to older and older music.
'Downward Spiral' felt like I had an unending bottomless pit of rage and self-loathing inside me and I had to somehow challenge something or I'd explode. I thought I could get through by putting everything into my music, standing in front of an audience and screaming emotions at them from my guts.
I've grown to love California: It's the dream of every English musician to come here and work in the sunshine. To walk up Sunset Boulevard, knowing you're going to make music - that's it.
One of my first bartending gigs was on Santa Monica Boulevard at Doug Weston's Troubadour, a very famous live music venue.
They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.
It was important for me to remind people that there's no formula... there's no boundary to R&B music.
Performing with Thomas Rhett our song 'Craving You,' I'm so excited for the fans to see it and sort of see our worlds come together because I feel like he's sort of a genre pusher and boundary pusher, and I feel the same way about my music.
We really had boundless optimism about the place of music in the culture - and in the world.
Every song has a bouquet, which is the music. If you can put words with something that is really apt, then you've done it.
I used to go to Bourbon Street when I was a kid and there would be club after club after club of people who were around when the music started. I mean these are legendary, maybe not so well known, but legendary musicians.
We could say that people who eat grits, listen to country music, follow stock-car racing, support corporal punishment in the schools, hunt 'possum, go to Baptist churches and prefer bourbon to Scotch are likely to be Southerners.
That's country music for you - bourbon and the Bible.
It's always on everyone's list, like, 'What's New Orleans like?' I think people have a pre-conceived idea, like it's just Mardi Gras and Bourbon Street. But really, there's so much culture, the music's great, the food's great. It's not good for the waistline! But I'm actually from the South, I'm from Georgia, so the weather doesn't bother me.
I didn't know much about him, and I wasn't a big country music fan. I listened to the Beatles and David Bowie, so I didn't know a lot about him.
I grew up in Deptford in south London, and at that time I used to wear toppers, loon pants and tonic suits from shops like Take 6 and Topman. I was a bit of a soul boy, but I had a very eclectic taste in music - I was into James Brown and Bowie; and I was the only kid in the neighbourhood who would also be listening to Chopin.
When I was younger, I was fascinated by David Bowie, for example. he had created an entire myth around himself. It was as important as his music.
I don't like being put in a box. I just make music, you know?
The industry is starting to be more open to what we do. I just don't want us to be boxed in whatever people assume Christian rap should be. We're dudes who love hip hop, and we love Jesus, and that's going to be apparent in our music.
As an artist, I would never let myself get boxed in. I'm a human being, too, and like most humans, I have interest in many different types of music.
