I doubt myself a lot. And I'm very, very just overly critical.

I don't like being the focus of attention. It makes me very uncomfortable. And it's part of the reason I never look at videos of myself, or I very rarely listen to my music or even read things that I might've said.

I do love being onstage. And I've always loved playing a character and being watched doing that.

I just became obsessed with looking for new singers, unknown singers, people that maybe have been forgotten, and really checking them out and analyzing what they do - and obsessive listening. I think that's the core of my work on music - has been just listening to things and listening to singers.

I think I'm fascinated with history and - just in general. And I'm always interested in how did - how did this come to be? Why is this the way it is? And even singing classical voice, I quickly became more and more interested with early music, baroque voice. And that became an obsession to me - just figuring out how - who are the ancestors of whatever it is.

I wasn't listening to that much classical music - not much more than anything else. I was really lucky to have parents who loved all kinds of music.

I think when black performers performed in blackface, they were kind of taking back slave songs, but it was still a little bit iffy because they were performing, a lot of times, for white audiences who found it hilarious.