If you've ever seen album covers for Arab female pop stars, it looks like the designer was paid five dollars to make them, and the extreme femaleness is astounding.

There are very few pop people I'm interested in working with.

I feel like I got my first real taste of Caribbean and Cuban culture while I was there. I have quite a sizeable Cuban vinyl collection from Miami thrift stores.

I've been exploring gender performativity in the Gulf since I was a teenager. I'm not a gender anthropologist, but I feel like there's an extreme binary between femininity and masculinity in the Gulf. From a young age, I knew I didn't want to be part of it. Gender is a huge gray area, and the problem with defined roles is that they cover up undefined ones.

For instance, members of the elite will never allow their children to become musicians normally, because it's - not embarrassing - but it's not done. There's a very famous composer from the '70s from a well-known family that disowned him, and he's a man, so there's this historical precedence with their relationships with musicians - not so much music as it's this abstract thing - but externally with artists.

I've never been to China. I only know what the West is telling me about China.

My music doesn't exist in a vacuum; there's a script and there's an actor and it's about to come together.