In grad school, a friend and I gave ourselves the task of writing poems in the voice of Beyoncé and Lady Gaga after they did the collaboration for "Telephone." I just kind of kept going. That was quite a while ago - Beyoncé meant something very different then than she does now.

I've been thinking a lot about folks denying what has happened in history, or just not acknowledging it.

In grad school, a friend and I gave ourselves the task of writing poems in the voice of Beyoncé and Lady Gaga after they did the collaboration for "Telephone." I just kind of kept going. That was quite a while ago - Beyoncé meant something very different then than she does now.

My friends and I have all been super motivated to work and to do the work that we need to and want to and think should be in the world.

There was something about Beyoncé that felt like a vessel, I guess, that I could kind of impose all of these feelings and thoughts onto. I was drawn to a little bit of a dichotomy between the glamour and celebrity and the very deep and complex legacy of black women, and what that means in terms of performance.

I also think that [political turmoil] gives artists something, a way of kind of processing.

So much of the world and the systems that we live within are made to keep us from feeling like we're free. The way that black women in American came to be is just diametrically opposed to being free.