Grammy nominated singer/songwriter, Bilal, has just released his fourth studio album, A Love Surreal. After several years of working mainly in collaborations and after a devastating album leaking, leading to the failed release of his 2006 work, Bilal is back with some surrealist sounds and some awesome new ink as well.

INKED: Over the years, your music has been qualified as a lot of different genres such as neo-soul, funk, R&B, hip-hop, and more. How would you personally describe your sound?

BILAL: I just do music, you know? I leave it up to the listener to categorize it. The only thing I won't allow the listener to categorize me as is "neo" [soul]. I try to think about it as something with all different genres in it. So I don't really give it one name.

You come from a very well versed musical background from jazz and opera and of course your time at the New School . How has that helped you to get where you are today?

Well that definitely got me a good foundation on knowledge, theory and just music, how to write music and stuff like that.

So A Love Surreal was released today. Can you tell us about that?

I'm just really excited about it. It's a pretty solid effort. I feel like I came a lot closer to my goals as far as production and sound. I'm pretty excited. I'm happy with the album.

A couple of years ago you had an issue with your sophomore album Love For Sale; it was leaked and never released. How has that experience affected your work on newer tracks as with A Love Surreal?

You know it just made me kind of shelter the music so it won't be bootlegged. That whole experience has made me a lot more protective of the music. But other than that, this album pretty much ran smoothly. It reminds me a lot of Love For Sale because you kind of got back to live instrumentation a lot more on this record. That was heavy locked.

The leaking of Love For Sale has also been used to your benefit because a lot of people have now been exposed to it. And now you have released The Retrospectation Mix Tape for free. How did that compare to Love For Sale?

Well, I don't know, ever since Love For Sale I've gotten a little bit more savvy with what happens on the internet. So I just gave the mix tape out for free. So that people would listen to it, you know? I've just learned to go with the times and how everything is being marketed. It's not just radio anymore. It's pretty cool.