Puerto Rico had a number of problems before Maria even hit.
My mother was born in Sinaloa, and she moved to Los Angeles when she was three years old. My father was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and moved here when he was 19. They met at the Palladium in Hollywood, and they've been together from that moment on.
I wasn't born to a wealthy or powerful family - mother from Puerto Rico, dad from the South Bronx.
In Puerto Rico, we continue to see the perpetuation of second-class citizenship in the United States.
When I left Chicago, people said, 'Careful with that Texas heat'. I'm like, 'I'm from Puerto Rico. I know heat.'
The most important thing is to find the balance between city and nature. I have that 'hippie quality' - my husband is a super-hippie Los Angeles boy - so we'll have to make time to go to Puerto Rico, and upstate New York, and be sure we get to do outdoorsy stuff like that.
When I was 11, I went to Puerto Rico for a month to stay with my grandmother. To see the way people lived there and experience my own culture was wonderful.
Commonwealth is the only alternative for Puerto Rico. It is the only alternative that harmonizes the aspirations and goals of the modern world by protecting Puerto Rico's identity and simultaneously guaranteeing its relationship with the United States, complete with a common market, common citizenship, common defense, and common currency.
I haven't traveled in Africa nearly as much as I'd like to. I've been there a few times, and I'd like to learn more about the various cultures in Africa. But that's the basis point of where all of the music that I love is based upon, from Africa to Cuba to Puerto Rico to South America.
We're going to Puerto Rico, where we're gonna close. And we're so excited, we can't see straight.
