When I was in Paris, I had literally nothing to wear, so I’d wear the same thing for a long time. You also have a unique look in how you dress. Eventually, with my music, maybe people will just let it go, just give me my space. There are Nina Simone comparisons which, sometimes, feels genuine, but at others it feels too obvious. After all, I’m a black guy sitting in front of a piano with the afro hair and all that. I think I am already: People find it hard to put me outside the whole soul thing. Maybe that's why people couldn't put it in a place they could understand. Hopefully its melodic and soothing in some places but, hopefully, not in others. So I think in hindsight my album defined that chaos in my own kind of way. The media tells one story and someone else has another version, and we’re all scared. I felt that's what the time was telling me to do. I was trying to not write about myself, I was more writing about the things I think are going on around me. It’s got nothing to do with someone saying your music is hard to define or not. That excites me because it’s how I find new things. With some of my songs, there’s a stop and there’s an interlude then it picks up again and maybe you resume the original journey or go off somewhere else. Or maybe there’s a diversion and you turn in another direction. And then, when it turns green, you continue. When you’re in a car and there’s a red light and you stop. I was talking about time and traveling, and wandering we human beings have forgotten that we have always been travelers.Ĭourtesy So song writing is a journey for you? I felt the album was straightforward, but that's because it’s my music. I kind of get bored quite quickly and that's a problem. You can’t tell the same story twice or it becomes boring. It certainly doesn’t follow traditional patterns of melody, verse, and chorus. With your second album, 2017's 'I Tell a Fly,' it seemed journalists had a hard time defining your music. You go on the internet and then you see the things people say about you, and so you’re always aware, but you just have to focus on what you’re doing. You know what people are saying around you. I think you always have to be aware that you just have to be yourself, not think too much.
I think it’s important for an artist to be unique, but to think that you are unique can sometimes lead you into vanity, and if you think people like you because you’re different it can close portals to new discoveries. Courtesy The slogan of the Vacheron Constantin campaign for the new FiftySix watch, in which you star, is 'One of Not Many.' How important is it to be different in what you do?