It felt like love to me. It embraced me. I accepted it and thought, "Well, this is how [Dre] loves." I got that from my mother and from my grandmother, who were abused.

I had to survive a lot. I didn't premeditate my life. Life just happened as it did. And I had to figure it out as I went along.

The beatings, the beatings were so normal to me. The abuse was just routine. I didn't wake up the next day and say, 'Dre, why did you hit me?' We never talked about it the next day. Never.

I was appearing on the reality show R&B Divas and when I started to fall apart it was very public. But I am glad that it happened that way. It made me see myself. And it made me transparent.

Doing reality TV is hard. You get lost. You are shooting three months before anybody sees it. So you are past [the emotions]. Then when it airs and the public sees it, they react and it drags you back. It feels you have grown, but then you suddenly feel like you haven't moved at all.

Do you see how Jerry Heller made it work? That is how he combined what we did to make the rap music into mass music. That's exactly how it happened.

Studying in countries like China isn't only about your prospects in the global marketplace. It's not just about whether you can compete with your peers in other countries to make America stronger. It's also about whether you can come together and work together with them to make our world stronger. It's about the friendships you make, the bonds of trust you establish and the image of America that you project to the rest of the world.