Growing up, my parents were Roman Catholic - strict Catholics - from New Orleans. I understood the idea in the principle of spirituality. I noticed it in the stories that I read. The Trinity was something that was brought up consistently: the power of three. Things happened in threes, and I thought that was brilliant.
Besides music, I was all school, school, school. And softball. I played the game since I was four, and I wanted to go to the Olympics for softball. I got a full scholarship through softball.
Music and dance is part of everything in New Orleans. So I grew up appreciating it all.
I couldn't do a record without knowing I'll translate it into something visual.
I want to get up and celebrate something - and why not celebrate being a woman?
I just want to be a storyteller, and I think the way to do that is by your lyrics, by your visuals, by your choreography, by your dance. It's imperative as an artist.
'Blackheart' is purely falling into the electronic world and pushing the envelope.
My father's music is all I remember from my childhood.
I would describe my personal style as putting Twiggy and Yoko Ono together. It is hobo with no rules.
When I look half naked on stage, it's not because I'm trying to be sexy but because I am dancing and want to be mobile enough to move.
I wanted to make an album that sounded like a release of inhibitions, really getting away from the idea that you have to be anything other than in that moment.
Anything that creates fear, I want to conquer it.
I can be a little messy and wild and carefree with my creativity as a solo artist. In a group, there's a certain structure, and everyone has a part to play, and being a solo artist, I can do as I please.
I've grown so much in the music industry. From 'GoldenHeart,' it was just about me and the music and me in this dream. With 'BlackHeart,' its more about me and who I am and what role I play in my own life and in the business.
Instagram is just something I like to do. I feel it's the best way to portray who you are.
I believe I am standing firm as a black woman in this industry in a time that it is hard as an artist period.
I had always had an affinity for series in literature, and I thought it would be really cool to incorporate what I loved about books into the story of music, to pile it together.
I started to write my own stories, like small novels, and those novels became poems, and after poems, they became lyrics, and song came from that.
Songwriting was my own journey. I never fit in with structure in songwriting.
I did write more mainstream stuff with DK. But you could always tell the records that I wrote in contrast with everybody else's because the format was a bit different. The harmonies were used in a different type of way. Way more metaphors in the mix.
