There are months when I'm on a plane every day!

When I was growing up, both my grandmothers would play the organ, and we would all sing.

You are only as beautiful as the many beautiful things you do for others without expectation.

Becoming a CoverGirl is truly an honor and a gift. It opens up a new platform for me to inspire women to feel stronger, braver and more beautiful inside and out.

Children go with whatever makes them feel good - like if that's the color green or orange, they do that with their clothes. As I've grown older, everything reversed. My music, my personality - onstage those things became my colors.

Honestly, I don't believe in menswear. I focus on what pieces are most timeless, transcendent, match my lifestyle, remain remarkable, and command intriguing attention across the room at an art gallery.

I just think my own ambition would not allow me to sit on the gifts that my creator had given me. And so that's when I realized that I could actually go away.

I won't sit here and say I've never had a pimple, but I try to have a really great diet, you know, lots of vegetables and fish. And I think stress plays a huge part too.

It's unfortunate that a lot of people think African-American female artists are monolithically R&B this-or-that, don't have to do anything by default.

Lauryn Hill, P-Funk, Marvin Gaye, Public Enemy - I have a very diverse palate for music. I can go from Judy Garland to Jimi Hendrix to Stevie Wonder to Rachmaninoff. I just love great music.

One of my core values is to help redefine what it means to be a strong and beautiful woman in the music and fashion worlds and to empower the wonderful things that make us unique.

People in my family and camp who grew up listening to rap music love 'We Are Young.' I've heard it play at weddings. I've heard it in graduation parties. It's a big idea and big song.

We don't all have to take the same coordinates to get to the same destination. Being a young African American female artist, I want to open doors for young black girls.

When I got into the music industry, I wasn't focused on being the most famous artist or even getting a major record deal. It was just to make music on my own terms or create my own image, do my own hair, do my own makeup.

Some songs you get. Some songs you may not. And I think that's the beauty of art: to question and to ask, to understand the deeper meaning after two or three or four listenings.

I feel myself becoming the fearless person I have dreamt of being. Have I arrived? No. But I'm constantly evolving and challenging myself to be unafraid to make mistakes.

I have a great body, I really do. But I want to be taken seriously as an artist, and wearing anything that shows it off will be a distraction from the music. That's how my signature uniform, my tuxedo, came about. It's classic and timeless. You'll see me in black, white, and a pop of color on my lips. That pop adds a little magic.

Everything is about balance. You can't work, work, work, work without any play.

I always carry my classic black-and-white tux and custom-made George Esquivel saddle shoes.

I always think about the next generation and creating a different blueprint for them. That's my goal: to let them know there's another way.