I already feel that I am making a political statement by sticking around in music, when I am doing it so differently to everyone else.

I felt pissed off because I realized that you have to teach people in a clichéd way how to be happy-and happiness has become too one thing in American media. Achieving happiness is not really about having a flat stomach and the best car.

Somebody told me that if you wake up every day and do stuff that's easy, then you're doing the wrong thing. If you wake up every day and do stuff that's really hard and you manage to get through to people, then you're doing the right thing. They might have just fooled me by telling me that, but it worked. I think that's my philosophy.

I hate the idea of street art. With music, I just needed my brain and my voice, which didn't cost anything.

We know that those huge U.S. brands do have political sway.

I am the bridge between the East and the West. I don't want to abandon one for the other.

When I first came out, I was a film student and my mom sewed clothes. I was already doing a million things then, whatever it took to survive. If I had to braid someone's hair to get one pound for my lunch money, that's what I did. But I did it in the most creative way possible.