I only have a Bachelor's Degree but I've had professors who have instilled this kind of academic rigor in me where I don't make any generalizations or closed statements. There always has to be room for interpretation.

This has always been my problem with genres is that they've turned into marketing tools. I've never been a person that allows themselves to be in any kind of box and I think that genres can be used as tools to define BPM or something but I think they're suffocating of music and other art. And I think they're inaccurate when they come to describing my work. Maybe other people like defining it, but I don't.

The first question [American college kids] asked me was, 'What state is Kuwait in?' They thought Kuwait was in America.

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

There is a congratulatory culture in the Gulf. From birth onwards, there is a culture of giving people trophies as markers of achievement for making it through society. It's cementing allegiance to authority at a very young age.

I still think you people need to be curious [in order to absorb the culture]. You need to search Uzbekistani pop music.

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.