I feel like my public life isn't necessarily my own. I'm starting to get used to how to maneuver and operate in New York in a way that I don't get stopped all the time. I just pretty much say "Thank you." But one of the things is to try to keep moving. Not to stop too long, because people try to get into a conversation with you all the time. The hardest thing is on the subway, or when people try to chase you down.

You don't see a lot of black rock stars. The music industry tends to be segregated stylistically. It's hard for a black artist to cross over to rock music.

That's what David Caruso said to me. We were talking about the whole Emmy thing, and he said that one of the things about awards in this town is that a lot is about the drama - like the drama of the performance. And he said "Your show, The Wire, looks so real, it almost looks like a documentary. And people who aren't artists - a lot of people who vote for this stuff - don't get it."

'The Wire' really drew on a lot of real-life situations and real-life organizations - it created fiction to make a social statement about reality.

I started acting, almost on a whim to help my music career.

As I got further into my career, as a character of color, if I was going to have the types of opportunities I felt I deserved, and continue to have them, I was going to have to start creating those opportunities for myself.

Because of the way tech is changing, and becoming cheaper and user-friendly, it's becoming easier to make films cheaply, maintaining quality.