Commercial music is music that a lot of people connect to at the same time, but that doesn't mean it has to be something shallow or without personality.

Oscar Wilde once said that to live is the rarest thing in the world, because most people just exist, and that's all. I don't know if he's right, but I do know that I spend a long time existing, and now, I intend to live.

Activists are cultural artists. They envision a world that does not yet exist, and then take action to create that world.'

Prince is king to me. As this half-naked, short black guy who looked like a girl in the 70s and 80s, he was talking about women in a way that was very unusual because he didn't objectify them.

The music industry is such a huge machine. There are still a lot of good people in it, but the character of the industry and the culture of the industry is very fast.

[In making music] it's nice to not have a goal, to not have a set format. It's very liberating to just get out of your comfort zone and be in a new space.

I wondered what things what things became when you no longer needed them, and I wondered what the future would hold once we'd gotten past our personal tragedies and proven them ultimately survivable.