I couldn't believe I was working with Michael Jackson. I thought, growing up as a kid, I thought Michael was a cartoon.

I've always had mostly women come out to see me perform. That's the reason the guys show up; they know R. Kelly is going to draw the women. Most of the songs I'm singing are catering to women anyway.

I started learning everybody's riffs, from Donny Hathaway to Jeffrey Osborne to James Ingram. That helped me create my own style of singing.

I started calling myself the Pied Piper, when I started using the flute sound in my music.

Well, I have a CBE and I accepted it with glee because it's not bestowed on you by the royal family, it's not bestowed on you by the government, you have to be nominated by the public.

I am an ordinary woman from a Tamil family.

I love everything about Christmas - the food, the 24/7 family time, watching someone you care about open the perfect present - and '12 Days of Khrismas' allowed me to spread that energy throughout all my communities.

There is a gap in my work from '84 to 2002, 18 years where I stopped writing. I was working at fiction and other things and starting a school and getting married and starting a family, but I wasn't writing poetry for the better part of 15 years.