By the time I was six or seven-years-old, I had learned several techniques of how to use my voice and was able to choose the sound I wanted to distinguish myself, so I started writing songs on the piano.

A good song can be produced in several different genres.

Eventually as a teenager, I was pulled up on stage by James Brown's saxophone player, Maceo Parker, during one of his concerts and scatted on his stage for 20 minutes. After I was done, Maceo's bass player got down on one knee as if he were proposing, took a string off of his bass guitar and coiled it up around my ring finger. He hushed the crowd and said into the microphone, "Wendy, from this day forward you are married to music. You have a gift from God. You must devote your life to using this gift or else you will deprive the world of something so special." I got the chills.

No matter what you're going through, there is no temporary feeling or circumstance that can take away the core of who you are.

I first got interested in music as a toddler by my childhood babysitter, Rosetta Atkins. She taught me how to sing by imitating the voices on the gospel radio station she listened to - both men and women's voices.

If you want to be a songwriter and place a song with a popular artist, then it's ok to follow the trends. This is mainly because many labels are afraid to take big risks on something that sounds too different than the status quo.

Every artist that becomes famous has a team, and needs to convince someone to believe in them enough to have others rally around them to achieve stardom. If I can be that person, then I am happy to do it.