[My mother] was the one who encouraged me constantly and always reminded me that God gave me a talent and I have to use it. I should not keep it locked inside.

I labour over details and whether a song should be a straight pop song form or exploratory. This is the curse with doing things by yourself.

A true artist is practically married to his or her art form so I just couldn't turn my back on it.

We lived in a suburb in Johannesburg, which is a massive city of about 8 million people, and my parents would drive me to school every day and over the weekend I would go to the mall and then occasionally on Safari. Pretty normal stuff, apart from the Safari.

When I think back, I felt like I had the life that a lot of white American kids grew up with in the suburbs in the States. I started noticing, as Apartheid's grip weakened, that we had more and more black kids at school; I had more and more black friends. But I never really saw a separation between myself and the black kids at school.

I'm really into a lot of different music, and a lot of stuff that sounds absolutely nothing like anything on the Mini-Album.

I always loved cartoons but the process seemed so difficult. Then I told myself, "Nothing good comes easy." So, I took a plunge and started my first animation stint in 2003.