I feel like a lot of people in the hip hop world don't take me seriously as a rapper, and I feel that first-and-foremost I came up as a rapper before I started singing. All a lot of people know from me is 'Cupid's Chokehold,' and they don't scratch t...
We both liked children; we just didn't want any ourselves. There were children everywhere, and we saw no reason to start our own brand. Young couples plunge into parenthood and about half the time they end up with some ghastly problem on their hands....
Believe it or not, I loved my Jheri curl and thought it was beautiful on me. It actually made my hair grow like crazy. What they didn't tell you back then was that once you get the Jheri curl, there's no way of getting rid of it, so when I was over i...
My writing became more and more minimalist. In the end, I couldn't write at all. For seven or eight years, I hardly wrote. But then I had a revelation. What if I did the opposite? What if, when a sentence or a scene was bad, I expanded it, and poured...
Twitter didn't make up the hashtag. Twitter didn't make up the retweet. It's our users. And people started using them so much that we decided to weave them into the product. I can't think of another company that has taken its users' actions and said,...
Workers were required to stay six months, and even then permission to quit was not always granted. The factory held the first two months of every worker's pay; leaving without approval meant losing that money and starting over somewhere else. That wa...
I'm unique for a suspense author in that I don't have a specialty background. A lot of suspense writers used to be lawyers or crime beat reporters. I didn't even know a cop when I started out. I finally figured out that I could visit prisons - I just...
Even though I support the blue side of Manchester's football heritage, I don't really mind that wherever I go in the world it's not Manchester City that starts the conversation. 'Ah, yes, Manchester United,' is the response when I say where I come fr...
People use the words "beginning" and "end" to describe the start and end of things. However, "beginning" is really the event of coming together when energy gathers, and "end" is simply the dissolution of that energy. That which came together can easi...
It's really rare for people to have a successful start-up in this industry without a breakthrough product. I'll take it a step further. It has to be a radical product. It has to be something where, when people look at it, at first they say, 'I don't ...
I don't care if he's not the emotional type or the complimentary type or what. No one can look at you in this dress, in all that fire and gold, and start talking about anachronisms. If I were him, I would have said, 'You are the most beautiful creatu...
The way we learn to write is the way we learn to talk: We listen to others and start mimicking speech, and that's how we come to become speakers. Writers you admire, you admire the way they plot, you admire the way they create a character, you admire...
You are the very creator and co-creator of your own reality. When you allow yourself to remember what you already know about yourself on the spirit level, you shine the light of unconditional love, compassion and understanding. You become more of who...
You don't have to apologize for loving someone or wanting a life that no longer fits your blueprint. The beginning phase of reclaiming your life always starts with apologizing to yourself, then apologizing to others for wasting their time because of ...
I started, whenever I got to a city, just getting on Style Seat, which is the most incredible app for any girl who doesn't have 100 stylists at her fingertips. I can see who's well-rated and whose portfolio I like, and then book an appointment all fr...
It was my Mum who got me into singing properly - she knew I had to do something with my voice because she knew I was talented. She was the one who pushed me into joining a choir all those years ago, when I was about 12. I remember she told me to star...
I started out doing something little. I went to Africa to spend five weeks putting roofs on a building. I seen the small child that stepped on a land mine. Three months later, I'm back helping pull the land mines out. Little things just kept getting ...
When I first started looking at Twitter, I followed people like Steve Martin, who will just write the funniest non sequiturs now and then, which I thought was really fun. That's kind of the road I've taken. Every now and then, something comes into yo...
Writing fiction is not a profession that leaves one well-disposed toward reading fiction. One starts out loving books and stories, and then one becomes jaded and increasingly hard to please. I read less and less fiction these days, finding the buzz a...
We as human beings need freedom, and justice, and a true cause to engage in to make life meaningful. This basic and comprehensive dream cannot be allowed to be shattered under any circumstances; if it starts shattering then the resistance will arise....
My real musical discovery started when I was 10 with Stevie Wonder and the Jackson 5, and acts that I connected with because they were young when they were doing it, like me. Then I kind of came into my own a couple of years later; I found new artist...
