I came in making choices about how I deploy aesthetics and imagery strategically. It seems to me that's the only legitimate way of making work.

My own personal sound is really progressive. It's like a mixture of gospel, pop, neo-soul, R&B. It's like a huge gumbo. If you're eating gumbo you grab a whole like cup full of whatever. You're getting a whole bunch of stuff that makes this amazing food in your mouth. So that's essentially kind of like what my sound is.

I want people to understand that this is a very calibrated image [Portrait of the Artist as a Shadow of His Former Self ], where point by point, very little is left to chance.

There's a beauty shop companion called School of Beauty, School of Culture at the Birmingham Museum of Art. I got an email that said a couple had a guerrilla wedding in front of that picture. They slipped into the museum with a preacher and had their wedding ceremony in front of it. It turns out that the woman is a beautician and the man is a barber, they had seen that picture, and they said it was the perfect place to get married.

I came in making choices about how I deploy aesthetics and imagery strategically. It seems to me that's the only legitimate way of making work.

It's forcing the issue of perception by rendering an image that is just at the edge of perception, which in someway forces you to look more closely and for you to adjust your vision so you can see in the dark.

What I was trying to construct was relative symmetry, where it seems clear that the shapes have arrived through consideration.