We weren't allowed to have secular music in the house growing up. I was home-schooled, and gospel was the only choice we had.

My dad liked a lot of Motown, but I didn't listen to it until my teenage years.

Now that I'm coming out with my own record people can see I'm a solo artist.

In New York especially, I always want to wear a nice overcoat to get through the winter: you can wear them so many times, and they make every outfit better.

My parents are professors; they're intellectual. I spent a lot of time reading books. To me, everyone always looks like they do in your imagination. And in my imagination, the characters always looked like me.

The way I look at it is that somebody in the world, no matter what your field is - teacher, violinist, football player - has to be the best. Why not me?

You know, I went to Oberlin. At that time, grades were - you elected to have them or not. It was all of that era where grades were out the window. But I did very well in school. I didn't really study the arts; I practiced the arts.

Education was a given, only because of the way I was raised. Truth be told, I thought, at 15 years old, I should go and get a record deal and drop out of school, and my parents would have had none of that. I'm grateful now that my parents were pushing me in that way, because I wasn't mature enough on so many levels to do that.