[Billie Holiday] was keeping it super real, and you can feel that to this day. Everything that she sang, she believed in. So I had to pick songs that I felt the same about.

I'm pretty much always planning two albums ahead.

For me jazz is kind of an extension of hip-hop. Kind of the sad thing is that a lot of jazz people just listen to jazz, and a lot of hip-hop people just listen to hip-hop, and there's not a lot of crossover, unfortunately.

All my stuff is pretty seamless - like now, while I'm touring [Yesterday I Sang The Blues], today I'm going to go in the studio, I'm writing my next one. For me it's continual.

I really like the complexity of jazz, the emotional depth I feel like there's no other music that's really as satisfying as jazz.

I'm working with a producer, Scott Jacoby, who co-wrote Trouble off No Beginning No End. Without giving away too much, it's a definite pop/r&b vibe, pretty strong melodies, and definitely about songs.

Once I had the band, Jason [Moran] and John [Patitucci] and Eric [Harland] - it's very exciting to have that trio of just world-class guys - I already knew it was going to be fantastic. I didn't really tell them anything about it. They didn't know what they were going to play beforehand.

I love that [ late-50s Verve recordings] - to me, that's the epitome of vocal jazz. It's my favorite style and era of it.

When I sort of step in my jazz world, it's somewhere between instrumental jazz and vocal jazz.

For me, the difference between a musician reading an arrangement on a piece of paper, and them closing their eyes and listening to what's happening around them and responding to it, is huge.

I really pulled from that repertoire that Billie Holiday was singing, and the way she sang it. It's sort of this beautiful, not really midpoint, but a period of her career where she really still had her voice. She had that deep wisdom that we've come to associate her with. To me, that's her at the height of her powers.

The level of musicianship in New York is the highest in the world. It's tough to get into. You start gigging making 50 dollars a night, or playing for nothing to get to something. It's insane. It's like being a modern dancer, or something - the hardest thing to make money from.