I just write songs that I strongly believe in and that are coming from inside. There's no tricks. It's honesty with big melodies.

Nothin' on You' by B.o.B was the first song where I heard myself on the radio. I'd been trying my whole career to write a song like that, which incorporates live instruments with hip-hop and singing.

I know a lot of artists say this, but it's hard to put myself in a box. I just write songs that I strongly believe in and that are coming form a special place. There's no tricks.

I've had big record label presidents look me in the face and say, 'Your music sucks, you don't know who you are, your music is all over the place, and we don't know how to market this stuff. Pick a lane and come back to us.'

Because I didn't have brothers, I was always interested in the kids down the street that had four brothers in their family, so I became one of them - but it was not my family.

In the family pattern, men support boys and women support girls, and because women have far fewer financial resources, there is less money to invest in girls.

Some of my family goes back a long way in Denver.

For a two-job working family, a pressure cooker gets a meal on the table in seven to 15 minutes, start to finish.