I grew up here in New York City and New Jersey, performing on Broadway shows, surrounded by some of my closest friends from the LGBT community. My father, a minister from New Jersey, shaped my view that love is love, that we are all equal.
New Jersey is very big. There are different areas of New Jersey. There is North New Jersey. There is like the center. There are a lot of actors from New Jersey that don't speak with a New Jersey accent.
I grew up in New Jersey, but my parents are from out west. They moved the family to New Jersey when my father, a sociologist by training, took a job in Newark running anti-poverty programs for the Episcopal Archdiocese.
My feeling about growing up in New Jersey was, 'How come I'm not in New York?' That being said, I'm older and I have a better worldview now, and so I think I grew up in an incredibly privileged position. The town I grew up in is beautiful. I got a great education, and I'm very grateful for it.
If you grew up where I grew up, you would experience a very different criminal justice system than Camden, New Jersey.
Well, let's put in this way, I grew up in West New York, New Jersey.
I was never that kid who grew up in New York and was always at the arthouse watching important films. I was the kid who grew up in the Midwest where there weren't any art films, and I watched TV. And that was really the medium that affected me and that I fell in love with.
I was born in New York City but grew up across the Hudson River in Alpine, New Jersey.
I was born in Newark, New Jersey, and grew up in Summit, an upscale town in north Jersey. There was this tiny area of Summit where most of the black families lived. My parents and I lived in a duplex house on Williams Street.
Because I first made my name as a rapper claiming South Central L.A., people often assume I'm strictly a West Coast cat. But my family was actually from back East. I was born in Newark, New Jersey, and grew up in Summit, an upscale town in north Jersey.
I grew up in New Jersey and never went up the Statue of Liberty.
I went to high school in New York City. So, I grew up in New Jersey my whole life, and I was watching all the people and all the kids that I met there become so jaded.
I grew up in Jersey. I've been to the Jersey Shore countless times. I've lived it.
Where I grew up, in New Jersey, there was a lot of organised crime activity. It was a part of life.
I grew up in suburban New Jersey in a transitional area that was surrounded by farmland that wasn't being cultivated.
New Jersey shaped who and what I am. Growing up in Jersey gave you all the advantages of New York, but you were in its shadow. Anyone who's come from here will tell you that same story.