I still sing. I still lead worship. I mean, it's - who I am, it's what God has given me to do.
Musically, I am still hooked and just hypnotized by the sound of the guitar itself. I mean, a guitar sounds good if you drop it on the floor.
I'm still getting used to everything. It still makes me a little emotional, just to see how quickly everything kind of changes - that it changes so fast.
We separate problems with the brain into neurological and psychiatric, and it's because it's stigmatised still. Mental illness is still stigmatised. Imagine if we treated people with cancer like that. Just because your personality changes and your behaviour changes, all of a sudden you are put in a different category.
I've always thought that I'm not really a guitar player, but I just practised so much that I developed into a kind of a bit of a musician, but I've often doubted my musical ear. If someone sings me a melody, I have to improvise on that melody, because I can't retain the information they've given me. That's why I still practise today, I suppose, because I still feel inadequate.
My da used to sing 'Take Her Up to Monto' to me when we were walking down the street - he still does, actually - because it's got a walking tempo, and I still sing it to myself when I'm walking along.
Rhyme to kill, rhyme to murder, rhyme to stomp,
Rhyme to ill, rhyme to romp,
Rhyme to smack, rhyme to shock, rhyme to roll,
Rhyme to destroy anything, toy boy.
On the microphone:
I'm Poppa Large, big shot on the East Coast.
Maternity has come a really long way from when my mother or my friends' mothers were shopping, but it's still very limited and it's hard. Just because you become pregnant doesn't mean your style changes. You still want to maintain your same aesthetic, but it can be very challenging with what is out there. It's been interesting to kind of learning to dress around it.
I talked with labels and they wouldn't help with my international career. They said, 'Saara, if you're in Finland you just have to sing in Finnish.' That led to this situation where I felt very lonely. I was really sad and still I was doing gigs all the time. I'd go onstage crying but I was still trying to sing.
I still enjoy traveling a lot. I mean, it amazes me that I still get excited in hotel rooms just to see what kind of shampoo they've left me.
I feel sorry for Obama because he's still got to fight the innate racism of Americans. I mean, did you see his first speech, when he got made President and they put all that bullet proof glass in front of him? I think that shows you how racist America still is. Just because he's black doesn't mean he's going to shoot anybody.
I'm actually better on the guitar than when I started, I think, because I've had so much time with it and I still practice and I love to do it and I love to sing.
I don't sing melodically. Rhyme pattern is how I sing. I also write like a lyricist or an MC because that's what I was before I was a singer. I just took those elements and put them into music.
For me, I just want to sing about life. And since I come from a spiritual background, I turned to jazz, because I feel it's still sacred, like gospel. It's serious music, but it allows room to sing about so much other stuff as well.
I sing. I used to think singing is going to be the route, and I still sing to this day. I still try to write lyrics.
I still sing because I love the sound of applause, because it's who I am, and because I still can.