I would not consider myself to be a quote unquote real New York rapper. I don't even like New York rappers.
When I listen to a Coldplay record, you're gonna hear an indie band, and you know that's what you're gonna get from Coldplay. With myself, I'm not sure it's the same.
When people ask me what I call myself, I am not going to say 'Christian rapper,' because what they think of when they hear Christian rap is something very different from what I do.
I never saw myself as a folk singer.
I always say 'thriller;' if they see you're a woman - and you're a blond woman - people assume you're writing about cats and romances where somebody has died.
It's a blue album, but it's not a blues album. I'm not pretending all of a sudden now I'm blues.
I came from an upper-middle class home, which is always a hard cross for a country singer to bear.
The essay I had to read was called, "An Essay on Criticism" by Alexander Pope. The first challenge was that the essay was, in fact, a very long poem in "heroic couplets". If something is called an essay, it should be an essay.
They always want to sell me as a hard bopper.
I ought to be more hardboiled; I'd like to be. I don't think I have it in me. To write in clipped sentences. To employ gritty metaphor in the introduction of sultry blondes... I can't do it, so why bother trying?
I think people who live in the worlds that movies are based on end up disliking them. Unless they're from a different time and era.
I feel like this: When you call me in to do something with you, you must want me to do soul-singing. Because you know I'm a soul singer. Don't ask me to come in and rap. And don't ask me to come in and sing pop.
Sure, it can happen that the director sees you in a particular genre, and they like your work in that genre; they tend to think that you can only do well in that genre.
I'm always kind of surprised how much I'm associated with country music.
Once readers and industry professionals have you pegged down as writing a particular type of book, they are less likely to try something new from you if they decided they didn't like the first one.
I don't want people to get confused. I'm not going to be putting out a gospel album.
After I tasted success with erotic thrillers, a time came when I was being offered only films belonging to that genre. The industry loves repeating a success formula, and the audience had formed a certain image of mine in their minds.
If you write your own lyrics now, and those are the main focus in the EP... people tend to approach it as Americana, which is wild. That's what leads people to it. But it's just whatever people want; as long as they like the music.
I am trying my hardest to stay away from the horror movies just because I feel like people are thinking that's what I do, that I'm a scream queen. I'd like to stay away from that.
I get asked all the time if I want to do more dramatic acting, and I really doubt that dramatic actors get asked if they want to do more comedies. I don't really know why that is.
Some people will never let the grime thing go, but my fifth album is not meant to sound like my first album.
I was being categorized as some kind of twangy songwriter. And that's just not how I see myself.
I feel like movies should stick to a genre and give the audience what they want, and then surprise them with the unexpected, and not just do the same thing you've always seen.
The funny thing is that people see one film like 'Racing Stripes' or 'Ice Princess' and all of a sudden, slip me into this category of 'that's what she's always involved in.'
People just decided I was an R&B artist because I'm black.
