My hair changes with my emotions... and my purpose for the day.
Every New Year comes with a list of predictions. Self-predictions, world predictions, how many times Lindsay Lohan will get arrested predictions, etc. I reserve the annual trend for people with genuine psychic ability and/or bloggers.
I am black, and I loved 'Django.'
Cornrows came back with a vengeance in the early '00s with every dude trying to grow his hair out to get 'braided up.' It was crazy. Girls were getting carpal tunnel in hoods across America trying to make plaits out of 1.5 inches of ungreased hair.
Contrary to far too popular a belief, style, fashion, and fabulousness are not synonymous with stank, haughty, and self-aggrandizing.
I am all at once in awe and in confusion at some of the folks I encounter during fashion week, consistently causing me to mutter to myself or whoever's in earshot, 'Is that really necessary?'
Fashion week is not an episode of 'Girls' or 'Friends,' where I'm OK that there is not a black person in sight because I honestly believe these characters don't come into contact with - therefore don't have - any black friends. No, in the case of Fashion week, it feels wrong.
In hip hop, 'real' has always meant one who represents in actuality what they present in imagery. For instance, once upon a time, if a rapper spoke about being gangsta, they needed to truly be that, or they were 'frontin.'
When I came into stand-up, I found a certain safe space of intellectualism, of camaraderie, of excellence that really has always been natural to me but always felt foreign in the other spaces I've been in.
'Smart Funny and Black' is basically a live black pop culture game show that I created. We have a live band. We have two contestants that we call 'blacksperts.' They come on stage and compete in games that I've created that test their knowledge of black culture, black history, and the black experience.
I paint because I love to paint. If someone buys the prints or whatever, so be it, but it's not my main form of business. As a performer, that is my main form of business.
I just love being able to create and make things that inspire and that make people laugh, and my motivation to keep going is to make more opportunities to do that.
My goal is to just have options.
If I couldn't get to where I wanted to by being my organic self - which is a smart, funny, unapologetically black woman - then I felt like it's not worth doing it if I can't do it the most organic way possible. Which is why I left the music business.
My mom is an incredibly direct person, and I like things to make sense.
The truth is what facts are. I like facts. I like things to line up and be clear, and when we are honest and true about things, it helps things to make sense, and it cuts out a lot of the fat that gets in the way and causes for the misunderstandings that I believe lead to violence and... dysfunction, etc.
I've always been funny, but I never considered it as a particular career path until my early 30s, when I realized that hip-hop wasn't going to be the long term.
I know some people would be like, 'Why are you responding to these racists on Twitter?' Sometimes it's for the purpose of letting them know they're being watched and that they're going to have to answer for their words.
I want to see my career evolve into limitlessness.
I want to be able to do what I want to do and have people care about it.
