I'm the type of person that doesn't like to wait for people to do things for me, and I never want to feel stuck. Why sit around and be like, 'I wish my label would book me some studio time,' if I can just buy my own studio equipment and figure out how to run Pro Tools and record it myself?
My dad's from Zimbabwe, and my mom is Danish, Irish, and Norwegian, so I have influences from a lot of different places.
As a person, I have a lot of different sides to me, and I genuinely just embrace them. I don't think, 'Oh, I gotta put on my cool face now!'
My dad was a theater actor, so he had an agent, and he brought me into his agency when I was maybe four years old. That was how I started. I started modeling, and it progressed from there.
It's never one solitary event that has changed my life. It's a bunch of little pieces that built and built up to where I am now.
The earliest you can play Christmas music is on Thanksgiving.
Part of the reason I fell in love with dance so early was because of people like Janet Jackson, Michael Jackson, and Britney Spears. When they would dance onstage and in their videos, that was huge for me. I lived for that.
I take my craft seriously, of course, but I don't feel the need to always play a certain character or a certain part or persona. I'm not going to cut something out of my life because it's not 'my image.' I want to be open enough that if I love something, I can do it, and it will add to myself as an entertainer.
I think my ultimate fashion icon would have to be Gwen Stefani. I love her persona; I love what she embodies and represents. I love the fact that she was a girl fronting a band of boys in No Doubt.
For me, I prefer to work on my own. I feel like I can tap into a more genuine place, and I feel like my best stuff comes from writing on my own in my own zone.
I love fashion. For me, it's always interesting because I like to be able to mix up different styles and different brands, kind of like how my music taste or personality is. There's lots of influences.
My tunnel vision work ethic is very hard to come by, I believe. I have had an unwavering faith in myself and my career for as long as I can remember.
The only thing that's better in a group versus being by yourself is the companionship. You have to do a lot of thing by yourself as a solo artist. But it's cool. It's worth it.
The craziest part of being on tour is being overseas and having crazed fans so far away from home. They don't speak English, but they still know the lyrics. That's a trip.
Fashion is an extension of expressing who you are. I love to entertain and put on a show. And that's definitely a part of that.
This... is a synthetic world many of us live in today - a dream, if you will.
My music is a direct reflection of the eclectic person I am. I don't like to be stuck in an R&B box.
It's important for me to put out things that I think are good - I want to be a fan of my own stuff. I also want my live shows to be really awesome, and dance is such an important element for me and my performances.
I want people to know that I'm a force to be reckoned with.
To break R&B into subcategories does a disservice to the music. I like to live in a zone where I can do whatever I want, where I don't have to worry about genre.
