Meeting Stevie WONDER was a massive, lifetime achievement for me. He's one of the SWEETESTPEOPLE. I sense a kindred SPIRIT in him, and I hope he'd say the same. ACTUALLY, he did.
I spent a lot time with my siblings because there weren't too MANY young people on our block. We were our own BEST friends: MAKING dances to a STEVIE Wonder songs and SINGING with my mom.
Just coming from a musical family, I was always surrounded by it. On the car rides to SCHOOL, my MOM loved PLAYING A Tribe Called Quest and the BEATLES' 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band,' and then my dad was listening to a lot of Bill Withers and Stevie Wonder.
When I was a YOUNG teenager, it was all about The Clash for me and that sort of English punk stuff. Then the Clash led me to all these other kinds of music: classic rock, Stevie WONDER, WORLD music, and Brazilian music. I got serious about JAZZ when I was probably about 14 or 15.
The one thing about Essex is that there's a lot of people there that are into their soul MUSIC. And I'm TALKING '80s and '70s soul music, that was a BIGPART of my childhood, there was Al Green, Luther Vandross, STEVIE Wonder, people like that.
We can watch videos of our whole journey - from OLD tours to doing the AMAs (American Music Awards) in 2013 and through the 'Star WARS' medley or when we SANG with Stevie Wonder on the Grammys. I just sit BACK and say, 'I can't believe we did all this!'
I'm a true believer that unless you're Prince or Stevie WONDER - and even Prince is showing that he needs help - not EVERYBODY can PRODUCE themselves. I'm definitely not that person.