Medicine comes with hope: the hope of having a healthy child, the hope of being able to raise your family.

There's so much stigma around HIV/AIDS. It's a challenging issue, and the people that already have been tested and know their status find it very, very hard to disclose their status, to live with that virus, and to even seek out the kind of information they need. This experience of going to South Africa a decade ago really woke me up to the scale of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa, how it was affecting women and their children. I haven't been able to walk away from it.

You know, I would say that songwriting is something about the expression of the heart, the intellect and the soul.

If you want to open a supermarket chain and put your face all around the globe, selling your baby and your dog, if it makes you happy, who am I to disagree, as the song goes. But it's not for me. I've always tried to keep my integrity and keep my autonomy.

Over the years, I was never really driven to become a solo artist, but I was curious to find out who I was as an individual creative person. It's taken some time, but now I feel I've truly paid my dues. I guess I'm at a point now where I'm more comfortable in my own skin.

I live in a world of possibility and opportunity. You look for the light. There's darkness everywhere but you look for that spot of light and you work your way towards it, and you do what it takes to get there.

I sang a lot as a little girl and entered competitions. I loved singing in choirs, but it was as I got older that I really found my voice.