It all started when I was 4. I was watching a lot of 'The Little Mermaid,' and I loved that movie. I was going around the house singing - I wanted to be on Disney and everything; I wanted to be a princess.
When I left Michigan and I came to New York, that was my goal, to be a professional dancer. And I sort of fell into singing by accident in a way.
Rapping and singing are not two polar opposites. There's so much middle ground. And I think there's a lot of people who find that middle ground.
I just started mimicking what I heard and singing along to it.
And I was mischievous. I was always into something. So when I got good attention from the singing, I knew that was probably where I needed to land.
When I was in New York, I put together a show; I put together this really great band and performed at this place called Littlefield in Brooklyn. It was really fun. I did, like, 10 standards, and then I just hopped around different bars like Mona's and different jazz clubs in New York just singing because I know all the standards so well.
Santa Monica, where I have always lived, is not a town where you will find storefront Church of God in Christ churches. So, the whole idea of gospel quartet singing is something I never knew existed until I began to hear it on record.
More than anything, that's been the thread through my life - the desire to write, the impulse to write. I mean, it's taken me other places, but it was the impulse to write that led me to singing.
You didn't hear the angels singing. It was brought down to Mother Earth, which is where it should be. And that led me to a lot of other reading.
Close to my heart is Muddy Waters. I love the way he sang. It was almost like a bark. It was like the bark of a dog: it's not fancy. Sometimes it's not like singing; it's like shouting.
When I started singing, people said I couldn't sing because I was a music director. I proved them wrong.
I started as a music director in Punjab and then started singing.
I got into musical comedy because of Shakespeare, not because of singing. They needed someone to understudy Richard Burton. I was also going to musical auditions because the agent I had insisted I go to them.
I tried singing. I tried playing a musical instrument. I really wanted to be a musician, but I never could quite pull that off. I liked entertaining, but I was always drawn to some kind of technical work - some kind of honest labor.
I was in musical theater when I first started, so there was always both acting and singing. But as far as getting a record deal, that took time. The majority of that time, I was acting.
When I write songs, I'm just writing stories, and being in musical theatre taught me how to act them out through singing.
Probably more than anybody else, I loved Nat 'King' Cole as a performer - not only his singing but his piano playing. Whenever he had a new record come out, I'd get it and try to learn how he was playing. And he was one of the nicest people I'd ever met.
I couldn't get away from the gramophone. It was the only thing that I ever really liked, and I was singing along by the time I was five years old - to the Modernaires and Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole.
I've been performing since I came out of the womb. I've been dancing and singing since I was a toddler. Acting seemed like a natural progression from that.
For me, singing is the most natural thing in the world. I've grown up with it and I know I've got that gift.
