But it is a tough gamble - this is my own money, and quite a few of my own dollars were spent to get this up and running over the last five years that I've been working on the album. That's difficult for some people to do. There can be a lot of revenue streams in this industry but it can also be feast or famine. But I believe that if you don't bleed, sweat or cry over it, it ain't worth havin'.

I remember seeing your videos on MTV and I'm glad to see you're still making them. I can't imagine the Rolling Stones or Gwen Stefani doing a song without a video, either.

It's absolutely imperative, and I really have a hard time accepting anything less. I feel like what I do is just as credible as anyone else in any other genre. It's just that this particular genre is treated like a bastard child, so people expect less and people strive for less in it. To me that's so short-sighted. That's never the way I want to lead my project. I want to compare my project to everyone else's, in every other genre. It's just as credible. I want what everyone else has!

If you reach for the stars and you fall a little bit short - at least that's what you were aiming for. If you don't strive for greatness of some sort, you're always going to be mediocre, and who wants to be mediocre? You wouldn't accept that. I also think it's really important because the market is so media-driven now that you have to have a strong visual in order to push things further than just that underground, in-the-club, dancefloor moment.

You DJ as well, correct?

I do. That's causing quite a stir at the moment, actually. I guess the first time that a lot of industry people saw me DJ was at the Winter Music Conference in March. People came away kind of raving about it - I was really kind of shocked. I was being accosted on the street the rest of the week! [laughs] I've been doing it about five years, since the inception of my Sugar parties.

How would you characterize your DJ style?

Energy, soulful, vocals, gospel, straight-up Jersey hump style. We mix it up between Baltimore basement style, New York kind of groove stuff - whatever's soulful and will make the crowd jump, we'll play.

Tell me about the Sugar Party in Baltimore.

It'll be four years old in September. Myself and my DJ partner Lisa Moody were disheartened at the way the scene was going here in Baltimore, with very few venues, very few people who were giving the music a moment to shine or build an audience or anything like that. Historically, Baltimore's been a very thriving House-oriented city - meaning, a lot of radio support, a lot of venues that played House music and club music and all that stuff. In the mid-'90s it seemed like it was starting to dry up. I was running around the globe like a psycho at the time, so I really didn't see it. Then in the aftermath I was like, "What's happening here?"

There needs to be a place where people can go where it's all about dancing and not about being pretentious and turning into a really chic kind of "Cocktail House" - the lounge thing where it's all glamorous and everyone pretends they're in a Puffy video. That's really what's happening! They want to be in a really chic-chic place and put on their chic-chic clothes and they want to dance with martinis in their hands to House Music. And that's cool in its place - I've got nothing against martinis! But I come from the place where you go out and you sweat and you dance and you close your eyes and you sing, throw your hands in the air and you scream and you take a ride with the DJ. You come together and you feel the vibe in the room, and there's a gay person over here and a white person over here and someone over there that you really can't identify - whatever! I like having a good time, and that's all that matters.

There was nothing like that happening here and I felt like it was my duty to provide it, so I started Sugar. You're not going to hear hip-hop, you're not going to hear rock. All you're going to hear is soulful underground House. Lots of vocals, lots of bangin' tracks. It's all about the vibe and having a good time. That's what Sugar is.