There's something different about growing up black and Muslim, especially in New Jersey. It's like when I left the mosque and I left my dad, I felt unprotected, but I also felt a weird sense of pride, like I was involved in this other way of living that was cool to me.

When I just decided to be myself, that's when you get questions like, 'How do you feel about feminism?' And I have no idea; this is just when I decide what I'm not tolerating and what I genuinely think and a little bit in between.

I don't think I'm inherently feminist. I think the universe wants me to be feminist, and I think I resonate with that. I think it just chose me to be this female energy... thing. And I'm very drawn to female energy, but I don't really have any prerequisites in feminism. I just roll with it.

Control is not real, and I'm really understanding that every day. It's about the acceptance of relinquishing control that makes it powerful for you.

I'm studying art and photography, like film and digital - a mix of both.

I think in some ways, acting and writing are the same. You're getting inside the skin of someone else; you're creating their language and their actions. As a writer, you have to see the whole picture and the structure, and you have to understand every character.

I love writing songs. I love doing my radio show and talking to the fans and listening to what they have to say, but there's a certain responsibility that comes along with being given the gift of music. I take that seriously, but at the same time I try to use it to do something that makes a difference in a positive way.

I was reading C.S. Lewis with my mom, and she was pointing out that he was dead, and I'm like, 'What do you mean he's dead?' We were in this world he created, and he was gone from the Earth. Yet in those black marks on a white page, his imagination lived on, his voice lived on. That is so miraculous.