I had to appreciate other things about music, like the writing and the cadence and dealing with producers. I became a student. I wanted to learn the actual idea of what this industry was before I could creatively speak a lot of the things that I wanted to speak.

At a label, you are confined to the team you have, but I did all my solo work myself, and that makes you more agile and able to go into weirder corners.

Major labels limit you, but I also learned my tricks from getting around that.

I have been doing choreography my whole life, and it's so important to make that marriage between music and the body.

I like to make people dream and think and imagine and learn and study. Nowadays, music is so literal - it's telling you, "This is how it is," and my music's the opposite. I come from an era where lyrics were full of imagery and metaphor, and that's all I know.

The only person who can confine you is yourself.

We get discouraged sometimes when people look at surface only and neglect the message.