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Tavis: Brian McKnight has enjoyed a terrific career in music, which began when he was just a teenager. Course he still looks like a teenager, doesn't he? Since then, he's gone on to sell more than--get this--more than 60 million albums, having become a radio staple with hit songs like 'Anytime' and 'Back at One.' His latest CD...bam--is called 'Gemini,' in stores early next week, and in just a few minutes, he's going to perform a song from the new disc, but first, Brian McKnight, nice to have you on.

Brian McKnight: You know, we have to stop all the formality right quick. I think, the 2 brothers need to--you know, there's never a reason for 2 brothers to have any kind of beef between them, and I wanted to bury the hatchet right here on your show right now. A couple of years ago, we did a thing--well, not actually, I taped an interview with Tom about voting and some other things, and I didn't really have a chance to really defend myself on the issue, but it got blown out of proportion, and I had a beef with you for a long time.

Tavis: Right.

McKnight: I'm gonna tell you straight up as brother to brother, and I'm gonna just bury it now because, you know, you're doing some good things, and what people don't realize is that everybody has an opinion, whether it's a good one or a bad one, about whatever happens, and we all have our own sort of ideas about lots of different things, but not everybody gets theirs aired on national radio or TV, so I wanted to bury that with you. This time we can move on with things from right there.

Tavis: I appreciate that. You're right. Everybody has opinions, and what was fascinating about that--I don't want to rehash that 'cause you know what you've done now. For all the folk watching like, "What's he talking about?" What did Brian McKnight and Tavis Smiley have a beef about? 'Jet' Magazine wrote about it, and if you didn't hear about it, then I ain't gonna tell you what happened, but I accept Brian's words, and, uh...what was fascinating about that for me was, I was like such a huge--was, still am, always will be--a huge Brian McKnight fan, and I was like--I was asking myself, how did I find myself in some beef publicly with Brian McKnight, a guy whose lyrics I know--I mean, I know every word to every lyric you've ever written, and every time I hear you perform, I feel like--I feel bad 'cause I wish I stayed in piano lessons.

McKnight: Oh, really? Me, too.

Tavis: You can't mean that. I mean, you play this thing brilliantly, man.

McKnight: Well, you know what? When my mother was trying to get me to take formal lessons, I was playing football, I was playing basketball, and it was not cool to take piano lessons, so everything that I know, I pretty much taught myself over the years, but the things that the guys that play in my band, they have the traditional sort of rudiments that it takes to be, to call themselves real musicians. I kind of play piano. I'm not a pianist by any stretch of the imagination.

Tavis: See, that sounds so lame to me. It sounds so lame to me 'cause you're like one of those guys that brothers like me hate 'cause it's like you're a triple-threat. You not only play the music, you write the music, and you perform the music. It's like you got--and I assume--I assume that that allows you to have the kind of control over your stuff that you really want to have, as opposed to interpreting somebody else's words.

McKnight: Well, from the beginning, and people always say, "How do you get to the point of where you can do this?" I've had complete autonomous control since the beginning.

Tavis: Since day one, yeah.

McKnight: Because I wasn't about to do this this way unless I had that from the beginning. I had been offered other record deals when they were saying at the time, you know, let's get Babyface and Jimmy and Terry to do it. I was like, 'I'm not interested in that.' I always thought that if I stuck to my guns, even on records that didn't sell that much, eventually, you know, just like the earth is spinning on its axis, it has to come back to a certain point, hopefully, it continues to come around, and it has come around enough to have some sort of success, so...

Tavis: How did you handle that, though, in those early years when your brother came out the gate before you did? Everybody remembers Take 6. I mean, obviously, they're still around doing their thing, but your brother Claude is one of the founding members of Take 6, and those guys can do their own thing in their own right, but it was like they jumped out first, and then you came a few years behind that, but how did you deal with your brother getting out the gate when you were just trying to find your legs?

McKnight: Well, even though my brother looks like a young guy, he's 7 years older than me, so when he came out, I was still in junior high school, and, you know, my brother and I are not competitive when it comes to our musical careers. When he made it, I looked at it as, man, being at this small school in Huntsville, Alabama, somebody else made it, so now there is a great chance I may be able to make it, too. So throughout the years, when he needed something, I helped him. When I needed some advice, he was there for me just 'cause he had already been there, so...now, if we're on the court playing ball or something, then all of that's out the window.

Tavis: You've referenced basketball twice. You are a huge basketball fan, and I've seen you play in a thousand celebrity games, and you're awfully good at this thing.

McKnight: Well, I still try to stay in shape. I can't run on the treadmill and do those sorts of things, but the biggest thing was that I had children young, and my son is now 15 and a sought-after high school basketball player, so we get to play on the same team as teammates, and it's the coolest thing. It beats anything I've done in my musical career to get on the basketball court with my son.

Tavis: Wow. One of the things, I think, that I've always loved so much about your music--actually, a couple of things. One: I love people's music. Like I love--all my friends know I love James Taylor, and one of the things I love about James Taylor is I can--I love to sing along and be able to follow the lyric and have it make some sense to me. Everybody that loves you, I suspect, loves you in part, as I do, because they can follow the lyric. How important is a lyric to you?

McKnight: Well, it's threefold for me. Lyrics are important, but not to the point to where I'm sitting around with a thesaurus, trying to figure out a new way to say "it" or "the." I just speak conversationally, the way we would talk in a conversation, not trying to throw in anything that would make people stumble, but if that lyric combined with the right melody with the right chord change at the right time with an idea that we can all relate to, then you have something to build upon.

Tavis: The other thing I like about your music is going back to my roots. I mean, I grew up in a church, and I grew up in a Pentecostal church, so we were in church 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year for 18 years of my life till I went off to college, and I always hear and feel this spiritual influence in everything that you do.

McKnight: When that leaves, that will be the time when I have to stop doing this. 'Cause that's the--you know, growing up in the church and doing "secular music," that's a big deal.

Tavis: Ray Charles caught hell for that.

McKnight: Yeah. Luckily, he did it first, so now down the line, it's not as difficult for people to accept, but coming from the Seventh Day Adventist Church where I came from, it's a tough thing 'cause if you do anything outside the church, you know, they're gonna label you as this and that and the other, but my family has always been behind me, and I think that they can feel that spirituality in the music that I do because, listen, even the preacher got to go home to somebody, and he ain't--he ain't bringin' in the sheaves at home with Mrs. Pastor, so, you know, there's a fine line.

Tavis: Yeah. I'm glad you said that 'cause, I mean, one of the things that I've had to do within my own life, coming out of that kind of very strict--for lack of a better word, strict upbringing in a black church, is that you sometimes feel guilty about being able to really exercise the talent that came from God.

McKnight: You know what's interesting, though, is that I never just did one. In high school, you know, we had to go to church on Friday nights, too. We had choir rehearsal, so I'd be there, then I'd go and play in a club that night. Be in church Saturday morning, playing with my mother. My mother was on the organ, I'm on the piano. Saturday afternoon, I'm playing at a brunch somewhere. Saturday night, I'm in another club playing, and the guys that play in my band were at their church Sunday morning playing, so I was always going back and forth, and, uh, the way I rationalize it. I mean, I don't really rationalize it. I think that I'm doing what God put me on the planet to do. David, who was God's heart, wrote songs about everything. You know, performed and did lots of things, so when you look at it from that standpoint, nobody knows exactly the right road to God, but I think that since I talk to him on a daily basis, I still think I'm following his plan the way he wants me to.

Tavis: I was talking to Silas, your manager. He was telling me that you never write anything down. Stuff just, you guys are on planes and move around the country, stuff just comes to you. This might be a crazy question, and I don't even know if you can answer it, but like because you write so well, like how does this stuff come to you? Do you like hear--do you hear melodies? Do you hear chords? Do you hear--like how does it come?

McKnight: Pretty much everything that you hear on the record, I heard all of that in my head before I recorded it.

Tavis: All right.

McKnight: And that's--that's the best way, that's all I can really say. Um...

Tavis: So you hear it in your head, and do you like pull out a tape recorder and start singing and start humming?

McKnight: No tape recorders.

Tavis: You just go straight to a piano.

McKnight: No, I can write completely without any of that. It's all repetition really. Um, the same way I watch 'SportsCenter' 5 times a day, we do that so that we know these stats when we talk and have these debates. Over time, I have 4 or 5 things working in my head at one time, and say, today, one actually presents itself to be finished, and I call my engineer and say, "I'll be there at 8:00, and we'll record it." I record it right then, so that it's almost like a hard drive. I can take something out, something else comes in, something else goes out, something else comes in.

Tavis: Yeah. I'm glad you watch our show enough to know who we are and come by and see us. Uh, 'SportsCenter,' I feel jealous. He's watchin' y'all 5 times a day. Course, I ain't on 5 times a day. Not yet. Brian McKnight, nice to have you here.

McKnight: Nice to be here.

Tavis: I'm honored to have you on the program. Up next on this program, a special performance from Brian McKnight. I've been waiting a long time to get Brian to come on this program and talk to us and to perform for us, so up next, he's gonna perform, I think, what are you gonna do? You're gonna do 'Every Time You Go Away.'

McKnight: 'Every Time You Go Away.'

Tavis: And, no, it ain't the 'Every Time You Go Away' that you think--anyway, it's Brian's version. Brian McKnight's version of 'Every Time You Go Away.' Stay with us.

From his new CD, 'Gemini,' here is Brian McKnight performing 'Every Time You Go Away.' Enjoy. Good night from Los Angeles and keep the faith.