It's very tough for a woman in the music business, and he really was such a motivator from the beginning, when I was super-shy, and he saw a lot in me on a personal level that he knew could carry through on the stage.
When I was little - like in preschool - I was very shy, but whenever I went on stage I just exploded. Ever since then I knew that this was what I wanted to do. Music has always been a part of me, music is my passion.
I was a shy kid but also very mischievous. Because I looked super innocent, no one could really call me out on my pranks.
Growing up, my dad would be gone a lot. But I knew what he was doing, and I wanted to one day enjoy that. When I saw how tired he was when he got home, that, in a direct way, prepared me and made me realize what a tough business this is.
I'm not really into religion, OK. I saw a lot of things I did not like when I got into organized religion. I think a lot of people abuse it, I think a lot of people use it, I think a lot of people make it what they want. And me, my faith and my relationship with God is very personal. And it's not anybody's damn business how we talk.
Yes, sharing super-personal experiences is scary, but I can only get up on stage and perform it if I really connect with the music.
To hear people saying, 'The music you are doing has really touched my life and it's moved me in a lot of ways. It's helped me get through some tough times.' That's the best compliment that you could get.
That meant I could come back whenever I could manage it. And she was telling me to go. She knew the decision was too big a load for me to carry by myself. She knew me through and through. She had eyes in the back of her heart.
We moved around so much when I was young. I was very shy, so shy that I would walk across the street if I saw someone I knew rather than deal with talking to them.
I have to be honest about this: I wouldn't tell a lot of kids to go and be writers. It's a tough, tough business. It's not a business. It's more like a tough road. It's a really tough road.
[DJ Ill Will] already knew I had the music talent prior to meeting him in person, I guess when he met me face to face he saw the potential on a marketing level and believed in the music I could create to back it up so we teamed up and the rest is history.
I'm feeling like the music business is reaping what it's sown. It's going through what inevitably it was going to go through. It was a very decadent, very glamorous business that took advantage of a lot of people for a long time and didn't do things right and had a poor business model.
I talk openly about my past and what I've gone through - abuse being something that was very real in my household, and a lot of chaos growing up as a child. I think that I naturally just gravitated towards music that I could really feel on a deep level - and that meant sadness. I was able to connect with that at a really young age.
I got into the music business thinking it was really radical, that it wasn't really a business at all, that it was a lot of people being artistic and creative. Not true, and it made me very
depressed.
Im in a very enviable position, being able to work like this 45 years later. Its always beginning! I never have a sense of finishing up, just new things beginning. When I die, theyre going to carry me off a stage.
In the beginning, I was very punk. I was very revolutionary. When they asked me to do Givenchy, I didn't want to do it. My friends pushed me. But the situation with my family was so bad financially. I really did it because, when they told me how much they would pay me, I saw that my sisters and my mom could have a better life.
You get tough when you grow up unloved. People described me as a boyish girl - rather shy, but I didn't show it. I had an attitude. I was rather wild. I lied a lot because I knew the alternative was to be punished. As I got older I realised I didn't have to lie any more and it was a nice feeling. I could be myself.