The "Gone Till November" singer - who moved from his native Haiti to Brooklyn, New York, when he was 13 - says his favourite songs gave him a refuge, reported Contactmusic.
"Music can save your life. Literally. When I first started to play music it saved my life. When you're in these communities as a teenager, music gave me a refuge.
"I was finding myself through poetry, through sounds and that distracted me from being on the block. At times when a shooting was going on, I missed it by 15 minutes because I'd decided to practise this Jimi Hendrix solo," he says.