You have to be ready to sing and perform at any time.
I got a mother who's very strong after taking the whippings that she took from my father.
What my home life is like now is great.
My first love is writing and producing. So I sometimes put my own stuff off to work on other people's projects.
I'd stand on the side of the road when I was just a little girl singing on trash cans.
I am very scared of wasps; my cousin was stung in the eye once.
I didn't want to be a genius! That ain't cool.
I remember, in school, writing Janet Jackson and Michael Jackson and asking them to come get me out of class. I would imagine them running down the hall and asking my teacher, 'Ms. Daniels, can we get Missy out of class? We're here to see Missy.'
Music is a male-dominated field.
I ain't no icon. It's people like Patti LaBelle, somebody like that's an icon. I'm just Missy. I'm just crazy, that's all.
I have to respect her family, and until they come and say, 'We're ready to do an Aaliyah album,' then I don't really want to come and try to get into that because that's very sensitive.
The person I eventually find will have to like me and my style.
A lot of times, I walk down the street and listen to people argue, and then I write a song about it.
You don't make any money being an artist. Writing and producing? You get your money from that. You live comfortable.
The fun part of being an entertainer is that you call up Six Flags, and you say, 'I'm coming,' and you get to get on all the rides before everyone. I hate standing in line.
Especially when the expectations become so high of you, you always remember the last record that might have been really successful, and you're trying to outdo that or trying to make something that does not sound like the last record.
I talked about my father being abusive to my mother - people have never heard me talk about anything like that. That brings people a little bit more personal with Missy.
You get people who rap about stuff that they don't do all day long. Half those guys, you hear them on the radio, and then you meet them, and you're like, 'Wow. They're so sweet.'
I always feel the need to work as if I don't have a deal, because that's what's going to keep me around for a long time.
My father was very abusive, and it was hard for my mother at first to leave because we had depended on him for so long. Sometimes you kind of get adjusted to getting that beating.
