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I decided to see how my voice sounds on different type of records. So I did Eminem and the Biggie, Florence and the Machine, and Muse covers. A couple of them just came from some jam sessions between me and my sister in her bedroom at my father's house in San Diego.

I remember singing around the house to records that were playing. All kinds of music. And the great James Cleveland was often in our house, and I grew up with his sound as well.

My brother had a big band in high school; after that we continued to play together, eventually forming a group called the Jazz Brothers, that recorded for Riverside Records.

I gathered that those two Big-shot Boys, Joe + Fletcher, just was afraid to let me sing, thinking maybe I'd sort of ruin their reputations with their musical public. They not knowing that I had been singing all of my life. In churches, etc. I had one of the finest All Boys Quartets that ever walked the streets of New Orleans.

There were a whole lot, I bought every blues record I could find, it wasn't just one or two people. My vocal influences were Ray Charles and Bobby Blue Bland.

My father's record collection was full of New Orleans music of all kinds. I used to listen to the radio in New York, and all there was on it at the time was Madonna and Michael Jackson, so it sort of passed me by.

I was a choir boy for 3 years in high school at St. George's in Newport, Rhode Island.

I was four years old then, and I think it must have been the next summer that I first heard the voices.

Being the youngest, I was a bit of a daddy's girl and sought attention from an early age by singing. I don't know where I got my voice, but ours was always a musical house.