It annoys me a great deal when people accuse me of not having any ambition because I've stayed at Southampton all these years. You can't get more ambitious than to aim to play for England, can you?
I agree to play a character if I feel that as an audience member, it will entertain me.
They didn't dictate to me as to what kind of music that they wanted me to play or what tunes, what musicians that I was going to use. They let me do my thing. That's one reason I stayed there for twenty-eight years.
People entertain me more than I entertain them.
I entertain more than just sayin', 'oh that's a female rapper,' or 'oh, that's a rapper,' period.' But, me, I put out music, and when I put it out, I also entertain on Twitter. I entertain on stage. I entertain talking to people.
As long as I can remember I feel I have had this great creative and spiritual force within me that is greater than faith, greater than ambition, greater than confidence, greater than determination, greater than vision. It is all these combined. My brain becomes magnetized with this dominating force which I hold in my hand.
Many years ago when I first started my career Maradona told me "to enjoy and play as you know", and that's stayed with me ever since and is the best advice I've been given.
For me to go back and to play for audiences some of whom have been following me for thirty years and some who have found me in the last five or six years, that's really an interesting thing. I have an audience that goes from kids to seventy year olds.
To me, there's nothing greater than making people laugh.
People often ask me why I choose to primarily play queer characters, and my answer is that as a queer man, I choose to align myself with projects in which I can be of service for a purpose greater than myself: to be for an audience of queer people of color, something I didn't have the privilege of seeing as a young man.
I like playing at public schools. I like when there's more of a diverse audience. I'll play wherever people want to hear my music, and I'll be glad and grateful for the opportunity, but I'd rather not play for a bunch of white privileged kids. I'm not meaning that in a disrespectful way; you go where people want to hear your music. So if that's where people want to hear me play, I'm glad to play for them. But I'd rather play for an audience where half of them were not into it than one where all of them were pretending to be into it, for fear of being uncultured.
I think the pressure gets to me when I play shows and there's more people in the audience than I'm used to.
It's very important that a film that intends to play tricks on the audience... has to play fair with the audience. For me, any time you're going to have a reveal in the film, it's essential that it have been shown to the audience as much as possible. What that means is that some people are going to figure it out very early on. Other people not til the end. Everybody watches the film differently.
I'm at my best when people are depending on me. If it's just on me and I don't have nothing to do, I'm going to be lazy. On the football field, it's every single day, every play, knowing that people are depending on me to make my play. That helps me elevate my game to another level.
What has made me successful is the ability to surrender my plans, dreams and goals to a power that's greater than other people and greater than myself.
As much as I'd like to think and as much as people mistakenly think my audience is blue collar people in the heart of America, my audience is basically, in the States, an NPR audience. I play college towns in the summer because that's who comes to see me.