How I set myself apart is by creating the sort of real and honest music, which is who I'm also trying to be.
I do play the guitar, but I do it for fun. And I am terrible at writing music as well. I have tried and failed, horribly.
I think music has the power to transform people, and in doing so, it has the power to transform situations - some large and some small.
I was lucky enough to have parents who started me on music very early, but most kids don't get that kind of exposure.
I guess professionally it began when Hal Hartley used some music of mine in his film The Unbelievable Truth.
I think that the jazzy approach that I have is based on the way that I hear music and in the way I play a supporting role to the other people in the band.
But I've been freestyling and messing around with rhyming since I was 13. That's when I really started listening to hip-hop music.
In rap, as in most popular lyrics, a very low standard is set for rhyme; but this was not always the case with popular music.
Will.i.am and I performed at Wango Tango. That's when my daughter said that I had made it in music.
You have to react to what's around you in the moment, whatever the music is. Just think of it as some place you have to enter and you need to find the key.
When you hear my music and you feel the emotion, it's real. When you see me in a film and you see a tear, it's real.
I used to judge the quality of music by whether I could make a 90-minute cassette and not repeat any artists.
I feel I was born with the music coming to me, and that's not something to be wasted.
I won't lie - when you're first bringing out music and you want people to notice, you probably overdo it, especially as a girl.
So okay, I accepted, and I realized while working for that concert that I'd been missing something very important and vital to me, and that something was music.
When you look at anyone's iPod or iPhone and their music collection on there, it's not the same 10 songs. People like diversity.
It's kind of hard to get deep with Rodgers and Hammerstein. I can't think of a moral in the music - it's just fun.
We weren't allowed to have secular music in the house growing up. I was home-schooled, and gospel was the only choice we had.
Apparently, there's this whole set of disgruntled people but obviously it's not my intention to offend anyone by changing the style of music that I've done.
With music, it feels natural that, in my head, I can pull things apart and then put them back together very quickly.
I buy records from all across the board. I get kind of a hybrid of influences in my own music.
