I loved growing up in Shaker Heights, and I really miss it.

Growing up, I loved looking at the photos in my mother's old Betty Crocker cookbook: the chocolate cakes, the cookie house, even the cheese balls and fondues.

My mother wrote a teen column for the South China Morning Post in the 1950s when she was growing up in Hong Kong. Her name was Lily Mark, but she sometimes wrote under her confirmation name, Margaret Mark. That was how she met my father.

Every writer needs new material now and then, whether it's traveling to Japan, volunteering at a food bank, learning a new language, or trying a new food.

My imagination ran 24/7, and to me, every problem was a challenge to solve and new product to create. It wasn't until I started teaching that I realized that not everyone's head worked the same way.

At art college, I started to do music and then painting and drawing - and that would have been my ideal life, to be an artist and be paid for it, to be able to create stuff. I realized it was difficult, but I don't know if I had the application for it.

My biggest superhero of writing is Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentine fabulist. He's an amazingly perceptive writer, but also willing to make a joke.

I really want to do the unexpected, and I think that's what I did when I executed 'Long.Live.A$AP.' I wanted people to really see the message and that I'm an artist who not only has the capability of rapping, but of composing great music both for people of my generation and for people with different backgrounds.