You can fool people. You can fool anybody anytime of the day, but you can’t fool yourself. At night, when you go home, you’ve got to be straight up with you.
In grammar school some of the girls had problems with me. My face was too light. My hair was too long. It was the black-consciousness period, and I felt really bad.
Growing around great musicians, you just can’t help it. I identified with it immediately. It was something that was so natural to me that when I started singing, it was almost like speaking.
You get that love from the people. It lets me know that all the madness I go through, all the stuff that the business has to offer with all its madness; it makes it worthwhile.
I’m the kind of person, if, if I have a day that is nerve-wracking, or my week has been bad or something’s going down, I won’t eat. Some people eat, I don’t eat. And it shows in my physical frame.
No, I’m not a drug addict, and neither is my husband. If that were so, you’d get a lot less work out of me. It would show in the performances and in the work.
I feel so blessed to just have done what I had done. To be able to just use what God has given me is a blessing. You know, never mind the Grammys, never mind the records, never mind all of that. Just to be able to sing.
I’m not crazy about arenas just because I can sell them out. It doesn’t do anything for my ego at all. I want to play places where people don’t have to sit in the nosebleed seats and wonder what the hell is going on.
