Normally when I'm writing, in the beginning I don't think of lyrics at all. I'm just improvising.

The racial conversation in the States is so multifaceted and multilayered. Obviously it's not always a positive conversation, but it's just so much more detailed than it was when I was growing up in South Africa.

[I] was always my dream to attend the Art Institute. I have always had this zeal to become the best that I can be and I saw that this institution will act as an avenue to me achieving that goal. I applied to the institution and got accepted based on my impressive portfolio.

A pretty pivotal moment for me was having a songwriting class with Paul McCartney when I was at LIPA, and then being called in a few days later by the headmaster of the school to tell me that Paul McCartney likes what I'm doing.

As a visual arts teacher, I have to keep my mind open. I have explores styles from pointillism to cubism.

Of course I had the parallel of having the early years of my life being spent during apartheid, and then having a lot of awful poverty going on around me while I lived in this bubble of middle-classness, but I was a child, and I only really started to (I hope) understand all of that fairly recently.

Generally I'll keep 95% of what I sing on that first scratch vocal take. Sometimes that idea will ferment for a long time, and sometimes I"ll be close enough to my studio and have enough time (kind of rare these days) to go and work on the idea. Not every song is super easy though.