I thought there were too many songs about people's personal lives.

A lot of us don’t get a sense of our personal power. I know the vast difference that one person can make in changing things.

What I'm trying to do is make music that people relate to, that talks about ideas that are personal but also make that connection to trying to make revolutionary change, and I don't need to change my music to get to a certain audience.

What first got me involved in politics was being 14, and a youth organizer comes to my house with a van full of 14 year old girls. "Hey, you want to go to the beach with us? But first we're going to go support the cannery workers' strike in Watsonville."

In reality, I know I'm not hurt directly by sexism; however, my life is made less because of it, so I started thinking about the fallout from relationships in which people feed off each other.

I've been involved in a lot of different kinds of projects. I've been on straight hip hop tours. I've been on underground rock tours. I've been on multimillion selling rock shows. I've been in the jam band thing, and both commercial and underground hip hop. Very few people listen to one kind of music.

When my daughter was born, that was the first time I cried from happiness.