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.

When I was five years old, me and my cousin got into a fistfight because when "That's the Way (I Like It)" came on the radio, he said, "That's my song," and I said, "No, that's my song."

I always write knowing that people will hear it, but also hoping they'll see it. So a lot of times I make lyrical decisions based on what looks better. Also I write based on what I saw for a video. I obsess over lyrics in the hopes that they'll endure in different ways. I'm very precious about it.

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."

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

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.

Becoming a father made me a lot more sentimental than I ever was before. I never cried at movies before I became a parent. I feel music more intensely. I think of my political ideas as ideas about how I want to interact with other human beings as opposed to abstract theories about how the world should be.