One of the difficulties for me is that I'm naturally very skinny, so the problem that I have is trying to keep weight on, put weight on. I have to eat six, seven times a day, and I have to have a lot of carbohydrates to try and fatten me up so I have something to turn into muscle.
As a child, I lived with being punier than other boys in class. The only consolation was my parents' empathy - they encouraged constant trips to the local drugstore for chocolate milk shakes to fatten me up. The shakes made me happy, but still, all through grammar school, other kids shoved me around.
It is no use telling me there are bad aunts and good aunts. At the core, they are all alike. Sooner or later, out pops the cloven hoof.
They can fatten me up. They can give me a full body polish, dress me up, and make me beautiful again. They can design dream weapons that come to life in my hands, but they will never again brainwash me into the necessity of using them. I no longer feel allegiance to these monsters called human beings, despite being one myself.
I had grown up in a world dominated by women - I had aunts and sisters and great-aunts - and I just felt like I lived in a completely female world.
I'm still doing me. I try to come up with different concept for my shows, you gotta keep the people interested, but I'm still me.
I got into cooking just by watching my mom and my aunts and my great-aunts and actually one of my cousins who has her own catering business in Atlanta, Georgia. So everybody around me really cooked and it was just all these different styles and backgrounds and cuisines of cooking that I found so interesting.
Well, I do have some maiden aunts that are not quite like the aunts in the book, but I definitely do have a couple of them, and a couple of old aunties.
Mum and Dad used to do a lot of entertaining. We had quite a nice house, so everybody descended on us at Christmas - aunts and uncles, who weren't even aunts and uncles.
I try to learn something from every character I take on. I try to better myself personally from it and Red allowed me to go ahead and accept what I did. Even though I had passion driving me, I still felt a little guilty that I gave up all the businesses in the pursuit of happiness.
When I'm working, I try to be serious and rest where I can. I just mark in rehearsals. I still train. I warm up. And I still take lessons from this unbelievable teacher in New York, Joan Lader. I try to be stretched and ready to go.
I call on those that call me son, Grandson, or great-grandson, On uncles, aunts, great-uncles or great-aunts, To judge what I have done. Have I, that put it into words, Spoilt what old loins have sent?
If I dress up, I try to wear something that's still a bit me, but then I regret it when I see that everyone else has dressed up more and looks amazing.
I don't want any more concentration camps for animals that are cruelly treated, force-fed to fatten themselves up for our consumption.
I've reinvented myself every year since 1998, and my style's still changing. It's grittier now. I always gotta try something new. I've grown up. Then I was rapping; now I do music, I write albums. But my distinctive voice and style, people still can't catch it. They're still asking me, "What were you saying on that song?".
I've learned to rely on the strength I inherited from all those who came before me-the grandmothers, sisters, aunts, and brothers who were tested with unimaginable hardships and still survived. 'I go forth alone, and stand as ten thousand,' Maya Angelou proclaimed in her poem 'Our Grandmothers.' When I move through the world, I bring all my history with me-all the people who paved the way for me are part of who I am.