Musician

I just want to shed light, illuminate and turn the spotlight over to all of the black people who have been being futuristic and innovative since instruments were plugged into a wall. With computers, machines, and music, black people have been contributing to that a great deal for a long time.

I think my worst enemy was myself. It's like I've been in my own way more than anybody else has been.

I'd like to change what people expect. I want to evoke something that's not nameable, for people to go, 'Huh?'

As a black woman, there's so much pride and communication through hair. It's naturally something that you are excited to embellish on and be creative about.

Popular music was this abstraction - an abstraction that I was relating to immensely but was ultimately far away.

Innovating something that is familiar. That's the general approach, and that's what I want to do with the melody as well. It should ring true - you should like every melody sequence without knowing what's happening next.

There's definitely a push and a pull to 'legitimize' electronic music live by playing the same way that a band would play.

A lot of people of color in the music industry are still more interested in embracing things that are considered white canon, and looking radical. Like when people point to punk in the indie world: If you point to the history of punk as what you see as your legacy, that's more prized and praised.

Fog and one blue light is all I need in life at the club. Just a dark room and loud music. I'm into that.

I am not carefree. I'm just not. I experience an immense amount of joy, a crazy amount of joy through sadness and so much struggle. There's something problematic about 'carefree black girl.'

To me, the best writing points to something literal or common but is also nuanced: The moment when somebody is telling you they love you while simultaneously disappointing you. Everybody's experienced that.

We are - as artists, we are racialized through genre and called black - without being called black - through genre.

After it became clear that I was not going to graduate, I had this moment where I was like, 'I need to not sulk. I need to pursue - at least try - to pursue music. But if I don't try, I'm going to be a really bitter middle-aged lady working in a cubicle.'

There are no black women geniuses that are being named in canons. I could name a bunch, but it's not part of common knowledge. It's not how the world is taught to think about black women.

I like smart rappers who aren't necessarily trying to be deeper than you, like Danny Brown.

When it comes to melodies, production, and sound in pop music, people try to be formulaic and solely concerned with what's resonant in a way that is so cheap and ugly. It actually just devolves culture, ultimately.

When I was growing up... I'm not going to say I listened to everything, but when it comes to vocals, I was really adamant about imitating all kinds of voices.

Even on my most angry song, I'm also still saying, 'Thank you for helping me to learn.' I've always wanted to give voice to that complexity in our experience.

In the music industry, you can't create success without having to engage a white man. It's just not possible. Whether it's executives, A&Rs, and the people that hold the key to your paper, inevitably, you'll be met with whiteness.

The assumption is simply that I hit on all the things I've hit on so far by accident, that my talent is just this raw thing that pours out of me, and then white people feel like they have to come in and contain it, refine it, and bring it to the place where it can been released.