Growing up in L.A., every kid wants to play for the Lakers. As a kid I went to their championship parades, bought a Kobe jersey - I went to the gym and made everybody call me Kobe - loved Shaq, loved the three-peat.

My style influences came from just growing up in L.A. and watching everything and the whole environment and just traveling.

For my style influences you've got to look at Kanye first. Pharrell when I was growing up, too.

Growing up in L.A., Kobe was my idol, really.

The war was an escape to reality... The only thing that mattered were human relationships; not money, not position, not even family... Only relationships with people who might be dead tomorrow were important. It is a sort of wonderful state of mind. It's too bad it takes a war to create such a condition among men.

I had no acting background in my family and no experience of theatre. I hadn't even been in a school play.

Once I tune in to the fact that my family receives my cooking for them as an act of love - that it's actually something that makes them feel cared for - it shifts my entire perspective.

Music is part of life. It is not the real life. I belong to that first: family, children. The important things.