My concept of successful living is escaping the matrix, as we've talked about. It has very little to do with what people think success is. I actually feel successful right now, even though I don't have an album out, or a video or a song on the radio, because I'm trying to be obedient to His will.

Everything takes place in a season. There was a season when that's all I did was listen to the music. Now I'm just in a place where I don't listen, I create. And if I do listen there are specific things that I listen to, and for specific reasons.

I had an economic system imposed on me.

This life is a process of learning.

My parents had a love for music. There were so many records, so much music constantly being played. My mother played piano, my father sang, and we were always surrounded in music.

There are a lot of young black girls who I meet in my travels who don't have a lot of self-esteem. So if I communicate to them that they're beautiful, no white person should find fault in that. It doesn't mean that young white girls aren't beautiful, because they are just as beautiful.

I sit here before you trying to figure out how to pay a tax debt? If that's not like enough to slavery, I don't know.