Make choices that are loving for yourself - with your diet, your relationships, and in speaking your loving truth - that are in alignment with what you want to be doing. When you see that in a person, you are seeing their passion and fulfillment, and that person feels good to you because they feel good to themselves. I know that I feel good and I think that comes across on stage; when I didn't feel good before, I think that came across on stage.

It seems nobody really talks about what we do with our emotional pain. Only the ascendant perhaps, who have learned how to fully meditate or do yoga or whatever through their emotional pain.

When I think about the cause I'm most passionate about, it's all in my music all the time, because I'm always singing about the empowerment of women. Always, even when it's a little love song - it's still about the empowerment of women and this high spiritual nature of love. It's the biggest healer ever.

I'm passionate about the empowerment and healing of girls and women. Where I do the most work in that regard is in my songwriting.

Life is a journey, not a destination; there are no mistakes, just chances we've taken.

I'm African American, I'm a lot of other things, a musician and an artist. But that woman part holds the most pain for me. And therefore, obviously, the most lessons.

I was born in love with music. My mother is a singer, many of my aunts and uncles on my mother's side are musical, my grandparents sang and played blues piano. It's literally in my blood. My mother wrote an original song to teach me the days of the week.