I feel like kids that grew up in New York City or in L.A. were exposed to all these subcultures and subgenres, whereas I was only exposed to the poppiest of pop music so I never had this negative connotation towards pop music. That's not South African music having an effect on me, but just how international music was filtered through South Africa affected me. It gave me a not-negative connotation towards pop music growing up.

What I love about African-African music is how unselfconscious it is in so many ways.

I believe that people have to be sensitized more about the many jobs an individual can branch out to after studying an art form.

World music evokes a feeling. You don't have to think about the scene that it comes from.

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.

Everyone can of course take their own meaning, that's the beauty of music and lyrics, but to me it seems like everything is about being attached to the past and being afraid of moving forward, afraid of that big dive or step and losing what was.

When I was growing up, it was still during Apartheid, so the country was very shielded from the outside artistic world. Anything that was too subversive was basically banned. All the music that we got from outside of South Africa was the poppiest, least subversive music that you could get.