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If you want to find the source of much of the music of modern day Russia, you will find it in the incredible compositions of that crazed lunatic Berlioz.

Growing up, there was only classical music on BBC Radio. We had to listen to the American Forces Network in Germany, which played pop songs, or the pirate radio boats off the coast.

I did a long concert tour in England and Denmark and Sweden, and I also sang for the Soviet people, one of the finest musical audiences in the world.

I went in, and there, in the front room, a converted bedroom, sat the first radio I had ever seen. The equipment was so bulky that it took up one entire wall of the bedroom. The set, which could send or receive signals, was tuned to KDKA in Pittsburgh, and I remember being completely flabbergasted at the thought of sounds coming from that box.

Quite frankly, I've always listened to the black side of the radio dial. Where I grew up, there was a lot of it and there was a lot of live music around.

I remember listening to Cube's music when I was like 14 years old, my friends listening to it up in Toronto.

I remember where I was when I first heard 'Boyz N The Hood' - 126th Street and Normandy, South Central, Los Angeles. I remember that I was on my porch. What they described in that song was so vivid and so clear to me because it was the kind of life I was used to witnessing and partly experiencing in my neighborhood.

Where I grew up, in the Detroit area, there was a really good station. Sometimes you would hear songs for the first time on the radio, and if a really special song came on, somebody would turn it up, and everybody would just stop talking.