South Africa was something that just kind of hit me.

Half of my family is in Los Angeles, so my cousin was the first person to play me, like, Snoop Dogg, and I would always feel like 'Omg I shouldn't be listening to this,' and my other cousin was the first to introduce me to Aaliyah, so every time I'd go to the West Coast, I'd get those West Coast vibes.

[New York] gives you room to be weird; you can be yourself and you can wear whatever you want. No one is really going to judge you because everyone is doing their own thing.

My main goal was to not tell my mom anything or anyone anything. Even within our family, we like to do it ourselves, we like to be our own boss, and we don't like asking for help.

You know, you always want to just do your own thing - I mean some people want to be exactly like their parents - Ibut I wanted to do my own thing and I ended up doing a kind of mix of my mom and dad.

Back then, it's weird, because I wasn't consciously thinking about it and I think that's why the doors opened and I had the opportunity. It was a big shift and I realized that you can plan and think your life is going somewhere, but you also have to surrender to what opportunities present themselves and really go for those as well.

There's so many people that I feel like as soon as that happens, they can really be and focus on what they want to do.