Taylor Hicks, the 29-year-old Birmingham, AL, native that captured the hearts and minds of more than 63.4 million people who voted him this year's American Idol is ready to seize the opportunity he's been working towards his entire life. After spending many years honing his talent, playing the bars of his native Alabama and Florida, recording a pair of indie albums, knocking on doors, giving up any kind of personal life to pursue his dream of making music, that moment is here.

And here's where the real work begins as he prepares to enter the recording studio to make his debut album for Arista Records. His first single, "Do I Make You Proud" debuted at #1 on Billboard's Hot 100, the Single Sales chart and the Pop 100, with more than 190k sold its first week of release. A portion of the proceeds from the sale of every CD, digital download, ringtone and ringback benefits the American Red Cross.

"The last year of my life has been an amazing journey that happens to very few people," he says "and I intend to make the best of it."

The man who injected "wooooo!" and "Soul Patrol" into the vernacular insists "what you see is what you get," and that passion, personality, and talent is exactly what has made him a household name.

"I'm still the same person that I was, the same musician," he says. "I just had to go through this process to get to the other side, to be heard artistically." Hicks is now seizing the opportunity to make the kind of album he'd always dreamed of, but never had the resources to record.