Growing up in the '80s in central New Jersey as a weird kid with a blue mohawk listening to the Sex Pistols and dressing really funky, I was bullied pretty badly. It was every single day in elementary school and kept going into middle school, too. I felt totally alone, without a single person there for me.

Growing up in New Jersey, teen clubs were your life. I'm not kidding! That was it. I was literally tied up five days a week with teen clubs; my parents would drop me off. Like, I didn't even drive.

I am a biological female. I have two children. I've been married for 16 years. I've never been a man.

Style is objective, akin to art, so it varies.

Listening to all these different musical genres from all over the world and listening to my father's record collection, the Irish folk influences from home. Of course they're all in there somewhere hiding within the lyrics and melodies. But rap music was the biggest influence on my way of writing and my performing.

Dad could talk about peace and love out loud to the world, but he could never show it to the people who supposedly meant the most to him: his wife and son. How can you talk about peace and love and have a family in bits and pieces - no communication, adultery, divorce? You can't do it, not if you're being true and honest with yourself.

I think there is something about... unless you come from a really evolved family that allowed you to talk about your feelings and felt like a safe environment, then you aren't really prepared to do that when you grow up.

Anything my dad says about what I say about him, I can remind him of ten examples where he publicly humiliated me. We're really close. The culture of mickey-taking is well established in my family.