Kali Uchis

I never had any technical training. I never considered that, one day, I'm going to be Beyonce like a lot of girls aspire to be. It just kind of happened.

I'm not a Barbie doll, I'm just a multidimensional human being who likes to make things.

I really try to balance my feminine and masculine energy when I write.

My dad's job was to manage apartment complexes, so when people would move out or when people would die or whatever, people left things in their apartments, he would always bring me home people's collection of music that they left behind. I was excited because I didn't really have money to go to the CD store all the time.

I always felt you could age with style and grace, or you could age in denial and hold on to issues and never push through.

Every time I go out to do shows, it just becomes a little bit more real and a little bit more full, so I'm excited just to see it hit its next level.

When I got my MacBook, I started playing around with Garageband a lot. It was just a creative outlet. I put everything into it. I would skip all my classes just to be making my songs. Stuff like that made me feel good.

I was a very creative child. I played the saxophone and piano, and I was always writing poetry and stories, or drawing in my notebook. I just tried to express myself through as many creative outlets as possible. And in high school, I started to get really into photography and videography and would spend hours working on it.

Back in the day, I used to get really upset when people used to say that I didn't really make all my own things - like my art or my videos or whatever. I work really hard on everything, so it used to upset me when people would try to discredit me or say that I wouldn't have what I had without this person or that person.

As an artist, you have to work hard for things that you can't really hold in your hand. I work not for money but for my career, to expand myself as an artist. Every video I make, it's not making me any money; it's just because I want to expand.

I was really grateful for the photography classes, the art classes, and the video classes. They would let me skip all my other classes and stay and work on my projects.

The first time I did a show, I definitely didn't get any money. My friend just let me do this show. I was so nervous: my mic didn't work, and I was like, 'Urgh.' It was terrible. It was a dingy club off of the highway, but all these people came. It was packed out.