Music is the greatest communication in the world. Even if people don’t understand the language that you’re singing in, they still know good music when they hear it.

A lyric has to mean something to me, something that has happened to me.

I might have lived long enough to learn all this in the long haul, but I would have been just another soul taking up time and space for a long spell before I learned.

I’ve gone the full spectrum – from gospel to blues to jazz to soul to pop – and the public has accepted what I’ve done through it all. I think it means I’ve been doing...