I had a reporter ask me how much I weigh. I said to him, 'You go first: How much do you weigh?' People always ask me what I eat. Other artists don't get asked these questions.
I don't read books. I read 'On the Road' in high school, and that was awesome, so I guess that's my favorite book. 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' even though I didn't read it, that's the greatest story. SparkNotes came in when I was in high school, and that was the greatest invention.
At 18, I got a publishing deal, so I was like, 'I can do this for real and not go to college.' When I was a teenager, my parents dragged me to a lot of songwriting conventions.
I was always a little insecure. I had brothers that played football, so I was just a straight-up tomboy for a minute. I didn't know makeup and hair stuff. My friends had to tell me what a straightener was. I didn't know fashion or any of that until the label gave me a stylist.
I just think women should love themselves more than they do. Because I think - with all the social media stuff - we look at ourselves too much, and we just destroy ourselves when we're way cooler than we know.
Since my father is a musician as well, he taught me growing up that if you can play jazz, you can learn all instruments and write on them. He wanted me to be a songwriter that can do anything in any genre. I'm all about doing every genre.
A lot of people think I came out of nowhere. When you start as a songwriter, nobody knows who you are. I met the guy who wrote 'Yeah' by Usher, which was a huge smash, and nobody knew who he was.
I'm from a little island off of Massachusetts, Nantucket. It's hard getting into the music business from there, but my parents took me to songwriting festivals because I would write and produce my own music.
With social media, with Instagram and selfies and all these apps that are trying to make you look perfect... it's hard for girls to grow up nowadays with all that stuff.
My uncle is from Trinidad, so, ever since I was 7, I grew up listening to Soca, the genre that's from there. It's my favorite sound.
Radio was my life growing up. Then, I started in our family band with my uncle, my father, my aunt and my little brother. We would go to The Chicken Box and all the bars and play.
I'm definitely bigger than a Rihanna. Pop stars nowadays are all perfect Barbie-doll bodies, and they talk about how they keep their bodies up with hard work, so in my eyes, it's good to have a regular, average body type in the charts.
Growing up, I didn't get the talk of 'Make sure boys take you on a date and treat you right.' So I was the girl who wasn't dating and would just text. I dated these guys who didn't have jobs, and I would always be paying. At one point, I remember looking in the mirror and thinking, 'You're too pretty and cool to be treated like this.'