Jidenna Quotes

The young always have the same problem – how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another.

I was a snot-nosed teenage skater at one point, who listened to only punk records and hung around people that had that idea of what is okay to do and what isn't okay to do.

Growing up in Seattle, I was always that kid who didn't subscribe to what everyone else was wearing.

All my friends started getting boyfriends, but I didn't want a boyfriend, I wanted a thirteen-colour biro.

I'm not out here trying putting on an act like I'm crazy. In my opinion, everyone else is crazy. They're the ones who put on an act for you, doing what they're told in front of the camera.

I grew up in a conservative New England town and showed up to my middle school orientation dressed like 'Clueless' while everyone else was wearing J. Crew and lacrosse uniforms. I never really fit into that preppy look.

I went to public school for like, one day. I don't get it. Everybody tries to be exactly the same. I think being an outsider is a good thing.

When I was younger, I had pink underneath my hair, and I got detention. I went to an all-girls school where you wore a uniform, and pink hair was not OK.

Songs don't have to be about going out on Saturday night and having a good rink-up and driving home and crashing cars. A lot of what I've done is about alienation... about where you fit in society.

The first things I did when I got out of school in '65 was to buy a pair of Levis and pierce my ears.

He who goes against the fashion is himself its slave.

I didn't go to prom because I was too punk.

Music was a way of rebelling against the whole rah-rah high school thing.

It has always been very important to look carefully at young people and the way they wear clothes.

I wore a coat and tie all through high school: my way of being rebellious in the late 1950s.

I grew up in the Bible Belt and I made my own clothes and dyed my hair purple. Nobody ever knew what to do with me.

In high school, girls started wearing high-waisted pants with their shirts tucked into them. I don't get what that's about.

I used to live in a gap jumper, tracksuit bottoms and a fake flower in my hair. Shocking.

I started growing my hair in December '89. I was seventeen. I signed my record deal and said I ain't combing my hair no more. I don't have too.

When you're young, it's all about the society of school and being cool, but they don't understand that somebody can be different and live a different lifestyle and still be a regular person. I was the same way when I was a kid.

When we got with George, he didn't care what was happening. He liked how crazy we were looking and dressing. I kinda liked being with George more so at the time, because George let us do what we wanted to do. But I needed both lessons.

Ignoring fame was my rebellion, in a funny way. I was insistent on being normal and doing normal things. It probably wasn't advisable to go to college in America and room with a complete stranger. And it probably wasn't wise to share a bathroom with eight other people in a coed dorm. Looking back, that was crazy.

When I was 15, I wore combat boots with a fluorescent Columbia ski jacket. I was trying to find myself.

People think that young people don't care about things, but I think they do care; they just aren't super interested in conforming to what older people think are the right way to do things.

I had begun to abandon bourgeois style of dress. The modern hippies are no pioneers at marking themselves out by unusual apparel …