Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" Sounding like I have agency in a song is important to me. I want to feel empowered by the music. "

Related Quotes:

" I know deep down I'm a star. "

" 'Take Me Apart' doesn't feel cohesive in a singular way but in a varied way. You can fixate on individual songs, and there are references from all over the place: Anita Baker to Bjork. I wanted to show all the facets of myself. "

" I would love to do an album of standards! "

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

" 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.' "

" 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. "

" Music in the U.K. is not racialised in the same way as it is in the U.S. In the U.S.. it's more rigid and conservative. And white people in the U.K. have more close proximity with black people and people of colour in general. "

" I'm pushing back against the white, misogynistic, heterosexual establishment in the music industry. Like, literally, in all its forms. "

" Growing up, Missy Elliot and Janet Jackson were definitely major references. "

" I really do like Solange, sincerely. I'm down for her, and I trust her judgment. "

" 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. "

" The goal is to blow the audience's mind. "

" We don't want it to be obscure music. We're not trying to be indie. We want to be popular. "

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

" Anyone who understands anti-racist work, a white person specifically, understands that it is not black people's responsibility, or any person of color's responsibility, to dismantle the structures that keep white people in positions of power. We do our job to thrive, to survive. To protect ourselves, to sit together and feel better and to heal. "

" I'm finding out what part of punk culture or white indie culture I actually still want to hold onto - What are the values? What are the contributions that I actually like? - and it not coming from a place of desperation or wanting to be embraced or wanting approval, essentially. "

" 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. "

" I'm coming from the zone of Faith Evans, but with weird production. "

" I don't care about the underground, even if that's where I'm currently residing sonically. "

" That's pretty much how every song of mine works - I start with gibberish and melody and phrasing. I speak it naturally first. And then I think about lyrics that fit into that. "

" Growing up in an Ethiopian household allowed me to feel like I had an audience before I had an audience. "

" A lot of white men in the music industry are promoting and participating in black culture in a way that is pretty careless. They want the currency of blackness, but they don't want the brunt that comes along with that. "

" I've always had this commitment to not being in one thing. "

" 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. "

" When I started making songs, some of them read as mixtape-y, and some of them read as album-y. "

" I do like things the way that I like them. But I'm trying not to be - I don't wanna be that way. I'm not a control freak; I wanna protect my agency. It's a weird question as a black woman. "

" I have something stupid, like, 12 credits, to graduate. "

" My first reaction to being pigeonholed or pushed into certain confines is to be like, 'No, I'm the opposite,' you know? Like, don't put me in a stereotypical black-girl category, because I'm not like that; I'm doing this thing over here. "

" The act of me just being robust in the world is so radical - it's so radical for a black woman to think she's going to be a star, because it takes so much to get there. It's still a battle every day, but I feel happy because I feel like I cracked the code and figured out how to work through it. Now I want to give the map to other women. "

" I'm just tryna be honest about all the things that I dig in my music. It's not just this over here, it's also that over there. "