Matisyahu Has Much to Say — and So Does His Music: 'Albums All Tell a Different Chapter of a Story' (Exclusive)

"It's an album all about stamina," the musician says of his upcoming EP 'Hold the Fire.' "It's about how to continue to be an artist as you get older"

Matisyahu has spent much of his life moving from place to place, but the place he finds himself in right now seems to already feel like home.

"We've gotten to be so good at all of these moves," Matisyahu, 44, tells PEOPLE in a recent interview. "We make it feel like home within days."

The home that the Grammy-nominated singer, songwriter, and alternative reggae rock musician currently occupies is situated right on the Hudson River. "There's an upside to [moving so much]," says Matisyahu, who will head out on a 34-date headlining tour starting on Jan. 31. "It's very cleansing. I think when you do a move, you get rid of stuff and you throw things away, and you start over in a new place."

And often, the moves that the New York-raised and New Jersey-based visionary has made throughout his life also happens to correlate with his album releases.

"The albums all tell a different chapter of a story," says the storyteller, whose career has included seven studio albums including the chart-topping Light (2009), Youth (2006), and Spark Seeker (2012). "I can associate different houses with different times in my life. And a lot of my kids were home births, so different houses were different births to my children as well."

And while there was a time back in his 30s that Matisyahu found himself craving home ownership, he currently prefers keeping his options open. "There is something very special about not owning anything," he remarks. "It's very much back to my Hasidic roots in a certain way of just not being too tied up with anything being yours. Our time here is not permanent."

Certainly, the aging process has come to directly affect the process of creating music for Matisyahu, especially on his upcoming EP Hold the Fire.

"It’s an album all about stamina," Matisyahu says of the five-song collection set for release on Feb. 2. "It’s about how to continue to be an artist as you get older, and to not let your flame go out or not be consumed by your fire. It’s about the balance between fire and water and how to keep it going. There are a lot of superstars out there that had very impactful and intense lives, but they did not have stamina or ability to just continue."

But as an artist and a man, Matisyahu continues to put the hard work in, and it is this hard work that he put into his new single "End of the World."

"I had a hard time writing that one, to be honest," Matisyahu says of the song premiering exclusively on PEOPLE. "It was one of the ones that I always loved, but for some reason, I just kept writing lyrics and melodies to other songs instead. Every time I approached it, I had a hard time with it."

That all changed when Matisyahu met a man by the name of Sircharles Coffey, a poet and a producer and a singer from Mississippi. "He delivered a verse and a chorus that was so good," remembers Matisyahu. "So, I sent him this beat and I said, 'Can I hear what you can do with this?' And he sent me something back almost immediately."

Sonically, the song feels different. Heck, the whole EP feels a little different.

"It's a little bit of a different flow," he admits of the EP, which also included his previous single "Fireproof." "I had to stretch a bit. It's kind of in my wheelhouse, but it’s also a song that has me pulling from new places. And that’s what feels good right about now."

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Read the original article on People.