India Arie

When I was growing up, I only saw really brown people on 'The Cosby Show,' and they were rich, and their parents were doctors. It wasn't like my home.

Nobody looked like me when I was growing up. None of the kids were as big as me, or as serious as me, or listened to the same music.

When someone is themselves through their music, it's soul music. James Taylor is soul music to me 'cause it's just him talking about him. It doesn't have anything to do with black or growing up in the church; it's where it comes from. It's just soul music.

That's the kind of music I want SoulBird to represent: music with intelligence and heart, music that moves people in their souls and their bodies. Music with wings.

For the first ten years of my career, I felt suffocated. People constantly stood over me while I tried to create. And in 2009, I hit rock bottom. I couldn't find myself because I was looking to be defined by the music industry or by being number one on the Billboard charts.

I was scared of failing, and I was scared of succeeding. I just wanted to be in a safe space and not grow too big or be too little.

I always have something by Stevie Wonder in my CD player.

Everything in my music has always been emotionally and spiritually motivated... But after I started doing yoga, the place where I came from changed drastically.

I always felt like - I mean, I was told, really - I couldn't go too far with the productions because it didn't appeal to black radio. It wasn't until I decided I was going to do what I wanted to do or I was going to quit that I empowered myself. I took my power back.

I wouldn't be back in my 20s for anything.

I loved her music and the fact that she was a classically trained pianist and that her voice was so unique, but what made Nina Simone my hero is that I had never seen anyone in the public eye who looked anything like me at all, ever.

It took me almost wanting to retire to realize that you need to ask for what you need. Everybody needs something different, but whatever it is you need, you need to ask for it and figure out how to get it.