I think what's important, as an artist who wants to be multi-dimensional, is learning how to shape-shift into those different paths fluidly and frequently.

I've had a very long career of being conservative.

To this day, I remember vividly Missy Elliott, Ludacris, and my grandma riding in a golf cart to set. My grandma went back to Ohio and told her bowling friends, 'Guess what? I was riding to set with Missy and Ridiculous!'

For all the challenges I've faced in my path to self-acceptance, I've also traveled it with my own set of luck and privilege.

I always think, when there's stuff that people don't like, I always say that if I have another success, I'll enjoy it more, but you don't really.

I'm very content to have great management and a great label. But for me, success started when my managers came to me and told me, 'Go ahead and quit your job.' I told them, 'As long as I don't have to wash dishes anymore, I'm good.'

For a start-up company, it is all about the religion of the product's excellence - the success of the product - while for a large corporation, it is the brand. We chose to maintain our start-up image.

It is so important for European countries, post-Second World War, to prove that they can be successful multiethnic and multiracial democracies. I think we in Britain have had great success in avoiding the hatreds and prejudices of the past.