ROBERT GLASPER

I do feel a responsibility because most people like me that are my age or younger, they don't quite make it over to the jazz side. They flirt with it, but they don't quite marry it.

My first memories of life were in rehearsal; that's why I can sleep through anything.

I try to get the hip-hop aesthetic, most times without an MC. I don't use a rapper or a DJ to give it the hip-hop style; it's strictly the band that makes that music, which is a lot harder to do.

The music is going to die if you don't tap into something that people today can relate to.

If you really dissect hip-hop you will find a whole lot of Charles Mingus, Ron Carter, Ahmad Jamal, a lot of classic jazz samples in there.

Your main radio stations, the stations that get the most listeners, don't play anything that has any kind of integrity to it.

I've heard some people say that I'm selling out, but I'm not. If I hadn't done 'Black Radio', and just kept on doing just piano trio stuff, I wouldn't be honest with myself; I'd be doing it to please other people. That would be selling out.

I started out playing traditional jazz, and I still do: I love standards, I love the music. But it must move on, and it must live and breathe, and continue to grow, and continue to change, and continue to mesh with other music - all that kind of stuff. Jazz can be on the playground too, you know.

I'm not really married to the craft of jazz - I'm married to me, and my style, and whatever I produce.

Jazz is like a big secret club. The mainstream media doesn't pay any attention to it; it's, like, 1 percent of the music market - no one cares. Why? Because the majority of jazz is old.

Everybody's not going to like jazz, let's just be honest about it. Everybody doesn't like everything. There's a disconnect in generations and some people just aren't going to feel that music.

I was really a nerd, and I was really more of a jazz nerd. So when I had my chance to put on something, most of the time it was going to be jazz, or gospel, or something like that.

There is a modern take on certain things you can do that, to me, is still jazz.

I feel like certain people think that certain styles of music will taint their jazz style.

When music is crashing around us, when you hear the same five songs on the radio that aren't really saying much, we can always go back to great music. Great music always lives on.

When I have to compete with John Coltrane and Miles Davis and Louie Armstrong on iTunes, which I'm doing now, that's a problem. That means that jazz is not being heard by younger audiences.

When my friends were listening to hip-hop or R&B, I was in the crib listening to Billy Joel and Michael Bolton, Luther Vandross, and Oscar Peterson.

For a while, R&B was going out of style. It was kind of getting kicked to the side. The first year the R&B Album of the Year didn't get on the TV portion of the Grammys is when I got nominated.

Everybody has a favorite song, but everybody don't have a favorite painting.

A lot of times, jazz musicians try to educate people. What other genre does that?

I feel like, paying homage to an artist, it's better to do something that's inspired by them - a new work that's inspired by them - versus another person saying they redid your song.

Anybody who loves jazz has a little bit of snob in them.

I got into hip-hop, but I still had appreciation for all types of music, so I was trained to have an open mind and to always go with the flow.

You have to go with the times. You're going to get left behind if you don't.

If you got every single artist in the world in one room, and you put Miles on one side and Prince on the other side, those are the two people that everybody would be trying to get a glimpse of. And Michael Jackson would be the other one.