I feel, as a songwriter, it's one of the hardest things to do - to sit down and say how you feel.

People can hear my songs are coming from something real. I mean what I say; I'm not just writing to impress critics or young girls, or older girls. The way I talk is the way I write a song.

I just really care about what people see. I want them to know that I'm working hard for this. The artists that I look up to like, you know, Michael, Prince, James Brown. You watch them and you understand that they're paying attention to the details of their art. And they care so much about what they're wearing, about how they're moving, about how they're making the audience feel. They're not phoning it in. They're going up there to murder anybody that performs after them or performs before them. That's what I've watched my whole life and admired.

Be in control. Know who you are. And don't try to be different just to be different.

To write a song you must have an imagination, to have an imagination you must be free.

My father moved to Hawaii from Brooklyn and my mother came there as a child from the Philippines. They met at a show where my dad was playing percussion. My mom was a hula dancer.

There's always a bittersweet kind of thing, but I feel like everything had to work out the way it is. Everything that had to happen, happened.