JOSE JAMES

When it's all said and done, jazz with a capital J is where I'm coming from. Dexter Gordon, Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk - that's what I really studied when I was a teenager and what really fueled my passion.

I think the frustration you can get into as a young artist is when you realize your limitations, but you want to accomplish that rather than seeing that you don't have to do everything. Just focus on your strengths.

I remember the first vinyl I bought: 'Purple Rain,' my favorite Prince album, ever.

I went to a Catholic high school, and I was super rebellious. I would dress weird or play jazz. I was definitely pushing against whatever was going on.

I think my first musical memory is actually listening to Billie Holiday. I think I must have been, like, 3 or 4 years old.

A lot of people in my generation, we use hip-hop as a tool to compose.

Kind of the sad thing is that - it's still true - a lot of jazz people just listen to jazz, and a lot of hip-hop people just listen to hip-hop, and there's not a lot of crossover, unfortunately.

Whenever I'm talking about relationships, it's always at least three things. It's my relationship with myself, my relationship with God or an idea, and then usually somebody, a real person. I try to operate on all three levels at the same time, and it's difficult, but I never want to have a break-up song or something like that.

I think comparisons are very on the surface. If I sing, like, 'Park Bench People,' and there's kind of a social undertone, people will say I sound like Gil Scott-Heron. But for me, the more insightful comparison would be a Roberta Flack or Nina Simone - people who really mix different genres of music.

My goal is to write one book of fiction, and that's all I want to do. It takes so much time, and I don't really have enough time. But I admire writers so much.

I feel like Europe is way more advanced. They're way more open to the definition of jazz. More cool. They're like, 'You want to do that? Awesome. You want to work with a rapper? Awesome.' They're not, 'Aah, it's not real jazz.'

I think a lot of times we think of music as being different from other art forms. You would never ask a sculptor or painter, 'Go paint this because you'll get paid more,' you know what I mean?

I want to break down the wall of, you know, you have to put on a jacket and tie, and you have to act a certain way, and you have to know how to order the right kind of wine. All these things have suddenly been built up around jazz and the way it's presented.

I'm a man that's unique to the world. That's kind of the star I was born under - on the cusp of Capricorn and Aquarius. My mother is Irish-American, and my father is Afro-Panamanian, so it's kind of been the story of my life to be a bridge between different cultures and different styles, and musically, that's between jazz and R&B.

There's a more experimental album that follows that, which is like Black Magic and While You Were Sleeping. Then there's a return to jazz, For All We Know and Yesterday I Sang The Blues. It wasn't like a planned thing, I just kind of realized it when I made a list of my albums. Like, oh wow, this is exactly what I did before.

The other songs [of Billie Holiday] - "Body and Soul" is like the standard - I also wanted some songs that I knew I would sound good on, as a producer. It's been the same nine songs since I debuted it back in 2012.

I go by the "Miles Davis school of production and band-leading", where you pick the best musicians you can, you provide them with a minimum of direction, and you just let the music happen. I've seen it work time and time again.

I love that [ late-50s Verve recordings] - to me, that's the epitome of vocal jazz. It's my favorite style and era of it.

For me, the difference between a musician reading an arrangement on a piece of paper, and them closing their eyes and listening to what's happening around them and responding to it, is huge.

If you look at the other singers of Billie Holiday's time, they were really trying to entertain. They were trying to make people feel good. They were singing fast - and she was singing the blues.

Jason [Moran] and John [Patitucci] and Eric [Harland] knew it was a Billie Holiday tribute. I'm sure they assumed it was going to be like another singer date, where we just have a bunch of charts and they write them down and they got paid and kind of moved on. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's not what I intended.

There used to be a club in new york called Bradley's - I've never been there, it closed in the 80's - but I used to study with Junior Mance, and he would tell me about Bradley's. It was a very important place for a generation of jazz musicians in New York. It was really all about pianists there.

When I sort of step in my jazz world, it's somewhere between instrumental jazz and vocal jazz.

When I start working on a new album, I kind of stop listening to a lot of outside stuff just so I can kind of focus.

I feel like, in many ways, Billie Holiday's still very under-appreciated as an artist. People focus on her voice, and all of the very recognizable vocal things that she does, which are great. But I wanted to, with this project, start the conversation again about her as a radical feminist, as a civil rights activist - taking a stance. And also just [her] being a non-conformist.