“T.I.’s my mentor; he’s a really close friend of mine. I call him my brother like we talk on the phone all the time. He’s helped me with my career.”

Not every artist is a role model.

For me, visuals are as important as the music. I just love escapism and giving people something to escape to. To me, that’s what art is.

Pledge allegiance to the struggle.

I’m irrational about all things creative and I’m always late!

Women in music have the bigger balls anyhow we endure much more harassment and critic.

First things first, I’m da realest.

My real name is Amethyst. It sounds like a stage name. My mom is kind of crazy.

As a child, I remember my dad would sometimes drive me into town with him to play pinball machines together. It’s a bittersweet memory but also a favorite.

I love purple because my name is Amethyst.

I found it to be kind of ironic, because I’m white, therefore I’m appropriating culture, but then Eminem won it – who’s white and won it many times – and they didn’t seem to say anything about that. I suspect it was just because they dislike me.

I think that music is still art, even if it’s commercialised.

Anyone’s happier when they’re not being verbally abused all day long.

Really good things take time to grow. Foundation is not built over night.

Whenever my country has something bad happening I feel guilty for not being there. It’s weird.

At the very worst, if I have a short-lived career, at least I could say I sparked a change – that I inspired some leniency in what people accept in hip-hop. And if I have a very long career and can be gyrating in a leotard at 35, that would be great.

I’d known since about eleven that I wanted to live in America.

I’m not a gangster, bro.

I believe that all men, black and brown, and white, are brothers, varying, through Time and Opportunity, in form and gift and feature, but differing in no essential particular, and alike in soul and in the possibility of infinite development.

Those are the same stars, and that is the same moon, that look down upon your brothers and sisters, and which they see as they look up to them, though they are ever so far away from us, and each other.

I generally wake up, exercise and read through a huge amount of newspapers. I get to the office somewhere between 7:30 and 8:00 – my brothers and I are always the first ones in.

We all have different perspectives but we tend not to disagree with each other very often in terms of where we want to get or where we want to be. So it’s been amazing working with my brothers.

He who serves his brother best gets nearer God than all the rest.

I love the fact I grew up wanting a brother and now I have four.

Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves.