I'm a firm believer that when children have a strong conviction about something, it's often because there's some powerful experience from a past life. Something that they didn't get to fulfill.

I embrace that I'm different. That I'm unique.

I'm a big advocate of music being an honest representation of who you are as a person and your perspective.

I mean, there's plenty of artists who are making R&B music, but because of their ethnicity, it's considered something else.

What is missing in a lot of urban music is perspective. You hear a lot of regurgitated perspective. It's a lot of: out at the club. Had drinks. Patrón. Big booties. It's this regurgitated idea of living in this, I don't know, one-night-stand moment that always starts at the club and Patrón. And so perspective, perspective, perspective is what I'm an advocate of.

I've always had this tremendous and very deep feeling of knowing my purpose, you know? It never dawned on me, it always very much known.

I think there's a huge parallel that affects my musical taste, and connections that have to do with my ethnic diversity and my musical tastes and the diversity of that. And it's interesting that, growing up on the circuit, it posed such a challenge, not only to me deciding what my identity was amongst my peers, but then on the music side, it was like trying to explain or convince people especially in the music industry that there was a place for what I was trying to do. But at the same time, I think it has a lot to do with timing and even me, like, understanding it.