So many times I've encountered people who are just kind of like, 'Yeah, Nigeria,' and, you know, thump their chest and seem very sure of, like, being Nigerian. And I'm just kind of, like, I wish I could be that sure.
I was just, you know, kind of getting racist jokes, kind of being isolated from the group. So it was definitely hard. I would come home at night and just cry my eyes out.
Its funny because when I did feel like I came out and I just felt like I was being truthful to myself, (it was at) that point I became very successful. So you know, it took a true kind of facing that truth of myself and being honest, that was when the real kind of fame or whatever that kind of stuff happened for me.
Well, my boyfriend's from California so it's kind of a bit of California countryside but closer to home. It just takes a couple of hours to get there. I don't know, it's just very laid back, nobody knows who we are really. We've just got our friends there who are kind of outside Erasure and everything. It's just very nice
For me, I just set little goals for myself and stay on that kind of track and surround myself with positive people along with my teammates. I just kind of have my goals and my dreams, and this is something that we've all been working for our entire lives, so it is kind of easy to wake up and want to better myself every day towards that goal.
I really love doing nothing. I really love just being at home and taking a couple of days, you know, doing nothing. You know what I mean? Just getting up, being around the house, going outside the back yard, coming back in; I really like to do nothing because I travel a lot. There's a lot of travelling. There's a lot of on the phone all the time. There's a lot of looking at papers and reading things and so you don't want to read magazines and you don't want to do anything; you don't want to read books, you just want to just kind of shut down a little bit.
I care more about the fans in general, just making sure they enjoy what I do. And then also I kind of had this kind of ideal of the kind of music I want to make and what I'm aiming for kind of creatively and just the quality of the music that I'm trying to make. And I have that in my head.
I had a few really bad years in school, just from not fitting in and being bullied. It was kind of brilliant being a military brat, though, because when you're in that kind of situation, you just think, 'I only have to hang on for another year, because then we'll move. It'll be fine if I can just get out of here.'
I think I probably am doing animation because I started as a kid and I learned on my own, and I worked by myself a lot. It's the only thing I really prepared myself to do in any kind of depth. And I've just kind of imbibed the technology and techniques and the thinking about telling stories this way. It just feels natural to me.
I just came home one day and, in a midlife-crisis sort of way, I told my wife, 'I'm going to run a marathon,' not really understanding what that was. Then I just kind of got into it, and now that I have been running pretty consistently over the past few years, I don't know if it's because I love it or because I hate myself. I just really enjoy it.
I try to be true to myself yet still at the same time look at comments and look at what the fans have to say and kind of put it in perspective. I'm never someone whose not open for opinion, I'm always just down to make it work and see how we can do things but at the end of the day I always want to make sure it represents me. It's really about just being humble and not selling yourself on being there already.
I think I kind of approached music with this sort of, like, weird thing where I kinda set myself up where I could kinda be myself but not really. I kinda had a backdoor out. So if you criticized me, I kinda had my defenses working. And the problem is that some people seize on that as inauthenticity, which is understandable. So that's painful because it's not that you're being inauthentic...there's a difference between being a poseur and being someone who's so emotionally challenged they're kind of just doing their best to show you what they've got.
If I'm really honest, I'm not a huge fan of scary films. I remember being a teenager, and people getting out like Halloween [1978] or Saw [2004], and watching them, and I'd kind of just stare at the television logo and blur my eyes and pretend I was watching but I wasn't because I just found that I would take the movie home with me. I can scare myself like a pro.
I'm just really excited to expose people to different identities, different conversations but also to kind of reframe how they think about black women just by being myself.
I took piano lessons when I was really young, like five years old, and I didn't really enjoy that very much. It was kind of too strict. So when I was probably 11 or 12, I started playing guitar and just kind of taught myself.
David Bowie is kind of the pioneer of glam rock. Not just for music, but just his overall, how he incorporates fashion and other arts into music. And he does a really amazing job about being fearless and that kind of stuff.