If you can draw something from my life that helps, more power to you.

My mother wouldn't allow me to speak slang when I was growing up. But when I got outside, around my friends, it was 'Yo' and 'That's the joint' and 'Yo, what's up?' So I had my game for my friends and my game for my mom.

As a rapper, you sort of act in music videos and in the persona you adopt onstage. You kinda have to put yourself out there and be courageous even to be a rapper. So, to step into acting was not that difficult a transition to make.

I promised my mom that if, after a year of putting 150 percent into my career it didn't work out, I would go back to school. I never did go back.

There's no way I can represent for everyone. I can't represent for all women or all big women or all black women. It's important for people not to make celebrities their source of who they should be in life. I can't take on the pressure of being perfect. Nobody is.

To me, I always felt like I was carrying a torch for women of any size to be themselves - it doesn't matter whether you're a size 2 or a 22, just be who you are.

If my brother and I wanted money in our pockets, we had to get jobs - my first was at 15, at Burger King.