What's wrong with hip-hop [is that] it became so one-dimensional; it became like a businessman thing. It's run out of creativity. It went so far off about making money that now everyone can do it.

That's what's inspiring to me - finding someplace where people haven't already seen themselves in a certain light.

That's what New York is like - you can't have real art happen in an institution because rich people can make the world stop. The stuff on the street is a lot more interesting.

I wanted to represent a different decade, and I wanted someone who goes back further than me. I go back the furthest on this thing, I never really noticed that before. I'm going to have to fix that or I'm going to look really old.

It could be the sort of declining grip of the American MTV-nation culture-the fact that MTV doesn't play so much music anymore.

I think I have to expand my creativity a bit, because it's difficult for critics to be, "Oh, this person writes their own lyrics and sometimes writes their own beats and sometimes makes her own videos." They funnel me through, "Oh, is it as good as blah-blah's record, which has had 50 million writers on it?"

Even if you're frustrated, how do you express yourself? There's no subculture like back in the day.