And then I got into the car to head back to our hotel, and when the driver turned on the engine, there it was: my single "Say Somethin" coming out of… - Austin Mahone

Granddad smiled at me before he said anything. It was a smile he gave when he was worried about disappointing me. "It's going to be hard," he said. "It's expensive. You might not come back for a long, long time." I nodded and took that in. I knew my mom had always worked hard for everything we had, and that Granddad and Mema helped us out, too. And I knew soon I'd be working at something. But I was determined I'd get back there before long. And, man, when I finally did, it was even better than I could have ever dreamed. But that was the amazing thing about my family: Even when something seemed kind of far-off, and maybe impossible, they always let me know it might be hard to get there, it might take work, but I should always dare to dream. And so now that it's paying off, I feel like all of this is for them as much as it is for me. It makes everything that's happened even better.

One day when I was twelve or thirteen, I was hanging out with some friends, and I heard T-Pain for the first time. Immediately, I was like, Oh, man, what's this? This is different from what I'm used to listening to, and I love it. By this time, I wanted something new, so I started listening to more R&B and hip-hop. From there, I started listening to Lil Wayne, Chris Brown, Drake, and all those guys. At the time, I thought country and R&B were totally different worlds, but now that I actually spend most of my life singing and writing and thinking about music, I can see they're kind of similar. Before you say I'm crazy, think about this: In country music, the singers are really soulful, and you can just hear all the emotion on their voices. They mean everything they say. And R&B is the same way. It's like every note, every word, is telling you exactly how the singers feel about what they're singing about. It's just that in country music, all that feeling is usually about a truck, and in R&B, it's more often about a girl. And for me, girls are a lot more fun to sing about than a truck. All joking aside, I feel like all music is the same, when you get down to it. It's about communicating emotion. And that's what I love about it so much. I wouldn't want to spend my life any other way.

I hit play, the music started, and that's when my nerves got the worst, because it was like, There's no going back now. So I just went for it.