I tell my grandchildren - I've got seven of them - to go to college and get that degree first. I could have stayed in college and still recorded. Isn't that something? The kids of today are doing it.

I really wish that I would have gone to college. Even my son, who's into rap himself, I tell him and tell his children, 'Go to college. Get that education - it is so important. Don't do like I did.' I had all this singing on my mind, and I just didn't have time for it.

It's kind of like a college degree... when you get one, no one can take it from you. When you get to say for the rest of your life that you've got a platinum album, that really means something.

I don't have a college degree, and my father didn't have a college degree, so when my son, Zachary, graduated from college, I said, 'My boy's got learnin'!'

People stayed with me and worked extra hard for me because I could see the potential in them - I'm not so sure they could see the potential in me.

My whole life, they said, 'Do not act. You need to get a college degree'.