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Any time you're nominated for anything, it's a true blessing and something you should be really excited about, but it's sort of time to not be considered new anymore because I don't really feel like I'm new. I'm just glad people still see me as fresh. I wish there was a 'fresh country artist category' rather than 'new.'

As a new artist, you come out, and there are so many other new artists. It seems like there's a whole wave of new artists that come along every year. In '05, I was part of the crop. It was a lot harder trying to set myself apart from the rest of the pack.

I have been very fortunate to be a part of tours with other artists that have exposed me to new places that I've never been before. Once you discover something beautiful, you just want to keep coming back.

Artists in general never stay in the same place; we keep growing. It's still you: you still have that core that you always had, but you work with new people and hear new things.

I like going everywhere. And I love starting new things.

I love new cities, and if I haven't travelled for a month, the need to go somewhere starts to gets under my skin.

If you really want to be an artist, you search yourself, and you find a lot of it comes from earlier times. I have pretty much built the work around my experiences. When I've moved from one place to another, the work has changed.

A lot of new genres were being born at the time I started going out to clubs in South London, and I was part of an exciting movement that has now blown up around the world.

I moved to Nashville at 17 to make music, and since then I've put everything I have into doing it right.

You make your first album, you make some money, and you feel like you still have to show face, like 'I still go to the projects.' I'm like, why? Your job is to inspire people from your neighborhood to get out. You grew up there. What makes you think it's so cool?