You're just so excited that you have this record deal or this movie opportunity that you don't stand up for yourself and say, This is what I want to do.

I have gone through many difference phases in my love affair with hip-hop.It evolves, your taste. It sometimes deepens, in terms of what's out; sometimes it's not as deep in terms of what's out. So it's definitely an evolution. I don't ever claim to be a hip-hop head.

What's important is that my family and I are all good.

Our mother always taught us to be in control of our voice and our bodies and our work, and she showed us that through her example. If she conjured up an idea, there was not one element of that idea that she was not going to have her hand in. She was not going to hand that over to someone. And I think it's been an interesting thing to navigate, especially watching you do the same in all aspects of your work: Society labels that a control freak, an obsessive woman, or someone who has an inability to trust her team or to empower other people to do the work, which is completely untrue.

I honestly try to have the approach that this is real life, this is the real world that we live in, and I don't really try to shelter [my son] from a lot of things that he's gonna see when he looks out of the window.

I think there's just certain lyrics and certain forms of hip-hop that definitely rang true, again, to a lot of people's truth, but you don't necessarily want to hear someone using that as a just kind of a in-the-moment, fun, careless expression.

As an artist, everybody has the opportunity to celebrate and speak their truth.