I struggle with depression and anxiety, and I have since I was a teenager. I spent a good chunk of time being very ashamed of that. Now I feel committed to talking about it and trying to normalize it as much as I can.

Language from songs and TV shows feel integral because it helps to create the environment and describe the full picture.

Sometimes it's just rejecting stereotypes, sometimes it's creating work. Sometimes it's just blocking out the noise.

I think that fear came from, "Okay, I'm going to have Beyoncé in the title, and people are just going to think, it's Beyoncé poems. It's light and fun." I was kind of super-conscious of that. It's kind of like this weird trick I'm playing, where you're like, "What an interesting, fun cover, and then the name Beyoncé." Then you open it, and it's just about my depression. All of it belongs together.

We kind of have to rewrite our own stories and our own ways of being free.

Since the election [of Donald Trump], I've been thinking about a lot of theory. Lots of [Michel] Foucault and [Karl] Marx, thinking about different systems, thinking about power. Trying to figure out what I can take and learn from history as a tool for getting through whatever is happening right now, which feels very significant and major.

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.