"Country" has become a marketing term. I see myself as a songwriter.
The mainstream media tend to lump everything together. To them, there's no difference between Madonna, the Rolling Stones, or whatever.
I was considered as a jazz man rather than as a blues player. There were no blues players-you played one sort of jazz of another sort of jazz.
I'm serious; I don't, I don't rap. I flow; I'm a flow-er. You've got rappers, you got MCs, and then you got flow-ers, I'm a flow-er.
I don't know why I keep saying this, and I don't know why I keep using their names... And I'm not dogging them. I'm not slandering them. I'm not saying they are bad musicians. But how can Taylor Swift or Justin Timberlake win for R&B and funk? They are pop singers.
Pop is everything from Kanye West to Taylor Swift, it's all pop to me.
I don't think that I'm a top 40 artist in any way. So I don't think I'm that mainstream.
When I sing a pop song, I'm a pop singer. When I sing a country song, I'm a country singer. I've been very lucky to cross over, because by doing that, you can't be pigeonholed.
I don't like being categorized as a rapper. I make music; I don't just rap.
I hate categories. Hank Williams is a great artist, period. Bob Dylan is a great artist, so is Marty Robbins. They just classify these people and put them in categories so they can sell the thing easier.
It's silly to throw things out or label things. You know, is U2 a Christian band, or was Johnny Cash a Christian country singer? I don't know, but they're pretty open about their faith.
I always think it's a little bit of a challenge when people sort of associate female artists as their own genre.
I wouldn't call myself at all as a crossover artist - I kind of hate that word - but in a way, you need to see me like that, because I'm working in classical music, I'm doing these other projects, and I'm having a rock career at the same time.
I mean, you could have said Elvis Presley was new wave when it happened. I heard Willy DeVille and Tom Petty and to me they were new wave really because they were new.
I dislike the word 'emerging artist.' Emerging connotes to me an alligator coming up from the water. I consider all artists to be artists, not rising, emerging, amateur, beginning, but the real thing.
I'm definitely a cult artist.
If I were not a black artist but I was still singing, playing guitar, and singing ballads that are spiritual and cerebral, I'd be easier to market because people accept that from white female singer-songwriters faster.
I think with certain artists you want to hear their album... and then there are other artists who I like where maybe it's more about the single. I don't think there is going to be one way that everything works.
In the music industry it's just you're either Black or white, and this is the box you get put in.
I was never an R&B artist. People coined me one, but that's because, especially if you're in the States, if you're black and you sing, then you're R&B.
There's no such thing as 'sissy bounce.' We don't separate it here in New Orleans at all. It's just bounce music. Just because I'm a gay artist, they don't have to put it in a category or label it.
I'm a really big Fiona Apple fan, and more times than not, when I put her on in the car, people are surprised. I think they associate her less as a songwriter and more as a '90s MTV generation artist.
Why do we pigeonhole and label an artist? It is a sure way of missing the important, the contradictory, the things that make him or her unique.
If anything, I want to be seen as a singer-songwriter rather than a pop artist.
I don't categorize myself. I don't think I'm perceived as a female act by my audience. My fans include just as many men as women.
