A biography for Fantastic Negritohasn’t been written yet.
“When I look into the audience, and I just know we understand each other, I can see their faces, and they know what I'm talking about. I feel like I've helped. Everything I've been through in my life, it helps people. Then that makes it worth it.”
“Fantastic Negrito is a persona, an incarnation in my third phase.”
“I'm not interested in re-creating the same blues I love so much. I'm interested in pushing boundaries.”
“Prince was a hero. He was the brother, the black man that was a little different. As a kid, you thought, 'Wow, he's different. If he can do it, I can do it.' I read that he was self-taught, so I started teaching myself to play the piano.”
“Art and culture are the greatest weapons against hate agendas, entrenched ideologies, and power structures that harbor and promote the business of divisiveness.”
“I write songs. I perform. I play the guitar. I play the keyboard.”
“I could have worked with great people like Nile Rodgers, which I regret. I don't have many regrets, but I remember he'd shown some interest, and I was just in my own world, man.”
“'In the Pines' is a very old song dating back to slavery. Lead Belly made it popular.”
“I hitchhiked to L.A. with $100 and a keyboard.”
“Slaves and the descendants of slaves created world pop culture. Let's keep it real and be very respectful about that.”
“That makes me very happy as a human being to know what I'm doing is an inspiration to people.”
“Music is something that's so powerful and means so much to me.”
“The one thing I had pure in my life was creativity.”
“There came a point where I did give up on music, but I'm the kind of person that when I face obstacles, I become more determined. It's just something weird within me.”
“I want to make other people around me smarter and more powerful.”
“I hope I contribute something useful to the human family. That's my intention. And I hope that it's useful to people.”
“My dad was a strict Muslim. He had a lot of rules.”
“Just keep being yourself. Keep being yourself, and people recognize it.”
“I think once I had lived life, once I had failed enough in this lifetime and got back up a thousand times from failing, I really connected to the blues.”
“I had a dream, as young people have quite idealistic dreams and goals, of, 'I'm going to go to Los Angeles, and I'm going to become a star!' I did get this huge record deal, and I recorded this music under Xavier. That didn't really work out.”