I listen to a variety of music. The only common point is strong lyrics; I'm more obsessed with lyrics than music. I need to hear a form of truth, and if it's a hard truth, even better.
The only person who really impressed me with making new music is Cudi. Everyone else seems to be jumping on the same music, the producer-made stuff, but the one person that's made new music to me is Cudi.
I don't think of myself as a folk singer per se, but I really like blues and string-band music. When I started listening to records when I was a teenager, the folk boom was going on.
When I have a chunk of time that I can really dedicate to music, I really want to get into it. I want to do some really hard stuff and push myself.
Janis Joplin is definitely one of my biggest influences. She taught me how to feel music, and I don't think there's anyone like her that could bring such pain and emotion to a song.
It was very interesting in my world, because I grew up as a fan and I did not know that there was a thing called R&B, pop, country, classical - I just knew that I loved music.
When I was growing up, music was music and there were no genres. We didn't look at it as country music. Popular music in Tuskegee was country music. So I didn't know it in categories. It was the radio.
Growing up, I didn't really like folk music - I wasn't a fan of Bob Dylan. I grew up mostly listening to rap and hip-hop; it was this new form of music.
I would say I grew up listening a lot to Barbra Streisand and Judy Garland and Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell. I grew up listening to those because my parents were kind of into folk music.
I'm really fed up with all the credibility talk. A lot of times it seems to be more important than the music. Well, I guess for a lot of people it actually is. We don't care for credibility.
I grew up in Synagogue in the boys' choir. We didn't listen to music in the house; only at temple. Then I went to a mostly African American high school on the South Side of Chicago and joined a gospel choir.
My first break wasn't professional - I was in 'The Sound of Music' when I was five. I played Gretel, the youngest one, because that was what kind of took off for me in terms of loving acting.
Part of Michael's uniqueness, I think, comes from the fact that he worked with music. He had a tape which he gave me with many different compositions, really eclectic. These pieces of music were sources of inspiration.
Absolute 80's is three hours of mainstream 80's music. I also do New Wave Nation that is more cutting edge. It is more punk stuff from the 70's to the 90's.
In the hip-hop community, it's about how real are you, or how strong can you be, and really my music just reflects me. If you can accept me, then you can accept my music.
I make the music my ears want to hear, I wear the clothes my body wants to wear and the ones boys call me back for, and I generally make the songs that my feet dance to.
My earliest memories of rap music was mixed with my earliest memories of reggae music. They were big sounds around the way, heavy bass lines, strong messages, definitely.
It's never been seen that a street artist go as far as I've gone - keep consistent without wanting to do a bunch of ventures outside of music to keep my face out there.
I always had a dream about trying to make a movie that had no dialogue in it, that was just music and pictures. I still haven't done it yet, but I tried to get close in the beginning.
If you think you're going to work with Cameron Crowe and not get into his music, you're crazy. But he doesn't force it on you. He doesn't force anything on you, which really makes things easier.
There are a lot of influences from different countries in my music. For example, I chose the guitar in my music, I think that it is a feminine instrument, so when I do not sing, the music expresses my voice.
