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I thought I'd be wasting my time to go to commercial record companies and make demos for them, because don't forget, I was doing what I was doing and nobody understood what I was doing.

I'd done recordings, little demos, since I was in college, which I used to get gigs. But I never thought I'd have a record label.

I've been a DJ since I was about 13, and I started out as a hip-hop DJ. So I was always playing records that would just get people going. I was just doing parties and high school dances and whatever, and then, progressively, I started making my own music, writing little songs here and there, but it was never anything crazy.

Every band I knew or played with had flyers and properly-recorded demos and contacts; I couldn't even get a gig.

I've made my records and I've done all the interviews. I've done lots of long tours. I've made stupid videos. I've done all that stuff and learned all the lingo and gone to radio stations and shmoozed with DJs on the air and met retail people.

When you don't have a record label and you have been on your own as we have, you can look at all these other ways you can get in touch with other people and get music out there again.

I'd been sending out demos and CDs for years. I knew my stuff was good enough, but I was getting nowhere. Then, three people - my future manager and two publishers - happened to send one of my tracks to EMI publishing in the same week. All of a sudden, they were interested!

I got out of high school, bought a recording studio and started operating it as an engineer and a producer.

I tried to work with a record label; I tried to work with a booking agency, variety shows. I went to Vegas. I just tried everything I could think of, and nothing took. No one thought there was a place for my style and my music; it was just too different.

Since I was 17, I had been just making records and promoting them.