It’s my nature to downplay.
How incredible our ancestors were. The first astrophysicists, scientists, physicians, mathematicians, architects, creators of so much of the world as we know it. It’s a blessing to know what cloth you’re cut from!
There are certain things we come into this world having to defeat.
Musicians have a really big part to play in spreading messages because they’re able to reach a large portion of people on an emotional level. Artists reach people at their heart; it’s the only time we meet in one place and put our differences aside. When you’re in a forum listening to music, all you feel in that moment is love and the understanding.
In the 1990s, with Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, those really big female artists were very glamorous, it was all about the glamour at that time. And so there was a big switch, the desire to be more who you were, not so beholden to this whole standard of beauty. It was a liberation. You see Mary J Blige – she did the same, wearing the combat boots.
Everything I do stems from something personal, not just because it will look good on paper or be a tax write-off.
I was subscribing to this sick identity. Stay in your place, be feminine, be a lady, don’t make too much noise.
This is truly a blessing. Breyon Prescott, Peter Edge and Tom Corson believe in me and have introduced me to a home that also believes and knows exactly what to do with the type of music I’m doing.
I like to audition for good projects because if it’s a good project, it’s an opportunity to get in front of a casting director.
I think people fetishize glasses in general. You could put glasses on a rotting pumpkin and people would think it was sexy.
What turning forty means to me- I need to take my pants off as soon as I get home. I didn’t used to have to do that, but now I do.
First of all, you have to understand that I’m like anybody else. When I hear my voice on a record I absolutely loathe my voice. I cannot stand my voice.
Politics and prostitution have to be the only jobs where inexperience is considered a virtue. In what other profession would you brag about not knowing stuff? I’m not one of those fancy Harvard heart surgeons. I’m just an unlicensed plumber with a dream and I’d like to cut your chest open. The crowd cheers.
To play June, I had an immediate connect with her background and culture. We grew up with the same religion and shared a lot of the same values of family and spirituality. But I was really so inspired by what a modern woman she was.
Never have doubted it, even when the plane crash happened. I wasn’t mad at God. I just knew that there was a reason that I didn’t know about why it happened.
I’m the worst at picking what movies are going to do well. I have no idea. I’m really surprised if a movie I like does well.
Ignorance is bliss? That’s bull, far as I’m concerned. Because I was making a half a cent a side – one penny for a record. It’s like building buses, for example. If you built this bus for me and I didn’t know anything about it, you could charge me whatever I’d pay for it. Now, which one of us is crazy? Me. And that’s the way they did me on the records. But I don’t fault them for it, because if you don’t know, you don’t know. It took me to learn.
Music is passionate. It’s love for me.
How do you expect me to see your nasty-looking eye ball if you don’t look straight ahead?
A coworker at SNL dropped an angry c-bomb on me and i had the weirdest reaction. To my surprise, I blurted, ‘No. You don’t get to call me that. My parents love me. I’m not some Adult Child of an Alcoholic that’s going to take that shit.’
When humor works, it works because it’s clarifying what people already feel. It has to come from someplace real.
Before you, my life was like a moonless night, but there were stars-points of light and reason. Then you flew across my sky, and there was light. When you were gone, when the meteor had flown over the horizon, nothing had changed, but my eyes had been blinded by the light. I couldnt see the light anymore, and there ceased to be a reason for anything.
