I'm from a middle class family but my father squandered all the money, so I didn't really run around with rich people. I was very judgmental towards a lot of them.

You can't judge people by their cover.

If you've got great parents, once you grow up and have to live by yourself, you're going to create some fake self as you get comfortable wherever you are.

When you have a lot of fake selves, most of the time it's because you haven't had parents around so you try to build characters to protect yourself.

When I started singing about my life and what I was going through, I felt more confident. It was my own life, I was being myself, I was telling people what was happening.

I loved English literature - if didn't it would have been hard - but I had to learn it myself. I remembered ways to repeat words, to put more emphasis on certain lines.

Poetry itself is music. I'm just lucky that I can convert it into music.