“I really just wanted to make something special for women. There aren’t enough records uplifting them out there.”

I could always sing just playing around, but I ain’t want to be no singer. I thought that was lame.

As cliche as it sounds, don’t stop. I feel like so often people will have talent or have potential, and they’ll quit because they don’t get anywhere as soon as they want to.

I think if you’re an interesting person, you don’t have to cloud yourself in mystery for people to want to know more about you.

If you’re my woman, you’re somebody I give emotions to that I don’t give to nobody else. You’re my safe space. I don’t want my safe space to be compromised.

I probably talk to myself more than I talk to anyone.

If I’m being honest, I was messing up on every other level in my life growing up – whether it was in school or in my jobs. I was always distracted by my love for music.

I think it was ‘The Diary of Alicia Keys’. That was the first time album I ever bought with my own money. I had a little Discman.

In 2018, nothing is sacred. Everyone is everywhere and knows everybody. I don’t text too personal because somebody might screenshot it and share it.

I want to put my soul into the music and still be who I am when it comes to an actual conversation.

The first couple of times I went out and heard my voice or heard people listening when I wasn’t the one playing it for them, it felt good.

If I have a collection of songs for an EP or mixtape, I create the narrative afterwards; but usually with an album, I have a concept and the name first.

I got a dog and am trying to elevate. I’m working out, eating healthier, reading books. Making ‘Make it Out Alive’ is going to be a reflection of all of that.

I’d prefer for people to know that they’re going to get some substance when they listen to my music versus hearing the same ‘Oooh baby, I love you.’

People will listen to a song and expect that you just have that persona on all the time. But really, that was your one outlet that one day to get that emotion out. The only difference was you put it on a canvas that’s going to be there forever.

I recorded everywhere. I would go to different cities and do a session there for the project. I did sessions in New York and I did sessions in L.A. It was just kind of wherever I was and I felt like cutting a track.

Rapping was kind of hard. It’s so many words. When you sing you can kind of stretch the words out. I didn’t have to write as much as everybody else.

Left all my Beatle records out in the sun, got a coke bottle stuck on the end of my tongue.

My process for the parodies is that I get an idea for a song and then get approval from the artist and then go in and record it and probably try to get it out as soon as possible.

Obviously given good health, and a continuing audience and a record company that allows me to do music.

If you use a cell phone – as I do – your wireless carrier likely has records about your physical movements going back months, if not years.

We try to give the fans a bunch of free stuff, and then have them buy the record. Without buying the record, it doesn’t support your artist.

These idiots like Radiohead and Sharon Osbourne that are like, “Free Ozzfest!”, “Pay what you can for a record!”.

I grew up in Minnesota, where we treasure our tradition of civic engagement – and our record of having the nation’s highest voter participation.

I think it was Columbia politics, Columbia Records politics that, that, Tom Wilson left [Bob Dylan] after “Like A Rolling Stone”.