I've been wanting to work with her ever since. It's great to see that wish finally come true.

There are autobiographical elements to the albums, and when I write, I always reference my own life as well as other things, so I'm just like any novelist or any fiction writer who tells stories.

Well, I was always a bit of a political junkie. Even as a kid I would read biographies of presidents and of civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King and Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington.

I always figured I would live long enough to see a black president. The movies predicted it. Usually, Morgan Freeman.

I love to make fried chicken.

My fried chicken is very simple. I pan-fry it in a skillet.