Listening to the stories told in jazz music and how those artists expressed their truths about the times and what they were dealing with is what struck me the most.
When I read the script and saw the jazz music setting, and when I read the name of the filmmaker was Damien Chazelle, I immediately got this mental image of Antoine Fuqua.
I think my intention was there, and my love for the music was apparent. And there are very few singers who get up and desire to take the kinds of risks that jazz musicians routinely need to be taking.
Jazz scares me. I've witnessed so many incredible singers and jazz musicians. Pop and soul music have always been the things that I felt like I could do.
Certain jazz musicians just copy what was done 100 years ago. The music won't grow if nobody takes a risk.
For me, let's keep jazz as folk music. Let's not make jazz classical music. Let's keep it as street music, as people's everyday-life music. Let's see jazz musicians continue to use the materials, the tools, the spirit of the actual time that they're living in, as what they build their lives as musicians around.
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.
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.
People need to realize that even the greatest jazz musicians, when they listen to jazz, they're not like, analyzing it and deconstructing it - they're enjoying it. It's like listening to any other style of music. It's saying something to you, and you kind of just absorb it.
There were two things I discovered when I toured with Snoop. One was that the band was all jazz musicians. The second was to instil in me a respect for other styles of music. From then on, whenever I played a new kind of music, I came with the same kind of open mind. What are they trying to do? What are they hearing? How do they see music?
I always used to say I'm definitely not a straight-ahead jazz singer, because then there's people who would hear what I do and say, 'Is it jazz? I don't know...' Whatever it is, it really comes down to creating music that makes people feel something.
I think that the jazzy approach that I have is based on the way that I hear music and in the way I play a supporting role to the other people in the band.
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.
A lot of music influences me in other ways than this, but I've always taken a lot of influence from Stevie Wonder, Frank Ocean, and Jeff Rosenstock for the Rex music. They were also the first three artists that released albums where I enjoyed every song.
What Jennifer Lopez puts out, it's not Latin music.
I think, as an industry, we should be supportive of a broad subscription model and not do anything to jeopardize the potential health of the music business - because we're not out of the woods yet.
In terms of music, I can try anything I want, even something that doesn't work at all, because I'm not putting my career in jeopardy.
Music is for people. The word 'pop' is simply short for popular. It means that people like it. I'm just a normal jerk who happens to make music. As long as my brain and fingers work, I'm cool.
I started the label Tzadik to support an entire community of musicians, not just Jewish musicians. But the radical Jewish culture movement was begun in a lot of ways because I wanted to take the idea that Jewish music equals 'klezmer' and expand it to, 'Well, Jewish music could be a lot more than that.'
It was in Delhi when I started doing jingles and making money through music.
