My first, my birth mother - her name is Queenie - she gave me a powerful medicine when I was a child. She told me that, "I was the best," and it helped me so much.

That's the moment I learned that the more you believe in yourself, the stronger the vibration touches someone else, and things begin to happen the way you dreamed that they would.

I mean thats a big part of our existence here on earth, the personal relationship we have with the person that we love, with the person that we make love to, with the person that we share our lives with. We expect a lot of things back from our loved one, and the lesson is to accept and not expect.

Society has a problem with female nudity when it is not . . . ”—Badu pauses to get her words together; she wants this point to be very clear—“. . . when it is not packaged for the consumption of male entertainment. Then it becomes confusing.

But now I realize that this record business really needs me. No one else is trying to take a chance or do something different.

What makes me furious, not just because we're in an interview, but I don't like when writers take your words and put them somewhere else, in the wrong context in their own article about you.

I think we [with Riccardo Tisci] share a sensibility about art - we pull from the ancient future.