"The tour is going great—I’m traveling to Fort Wayne [Indiana] right now, heading to Atlanta tomorrow. As far as having bigger audiences out on the road than in New Orleans, I’d say yes and no. Some of the places offer a bigger platform—I opened for Waka Flocka in Memphis [April 1 at Rhodes College] and had 1,000 people there. But I had 100 people show up for my album release party [for The Beautiful] at the Hi-Ho on March 19.

I named my album The Beautiful because, even thou...