Performs at the Hammersmith Apollo, London, on 27 June as part of BluesFest 2012. In shortĬareer: Has won four Grammy awards for her albums, which include Baduizm, Mama's Gun, and New Amerykah Part One and Part Two. What advice would you give a young singer?įollow your heart: your only job is to be honest. I was honoured, but it put me in a category.Īnybody who wants to know me, or anything about me – about my children, enemies, fans, the gods – listen to Baduizm from 1997. What's the worst thing anyone ever said about you? Everything I felt at that moment is in that song – that love is lost, and hate is running things.

We're just freestyling about how we feel about life and what it means. I recorded it with Q-Tip for Roy Hargrove's album. What one song would work as the soundtrack to your life?Ī song called Who Knows the Way to Go.

What's the greatest threat to music today?įear: when an artist is afraid of his or her own art. What work of art would you most like to own? It's always a challenge to try to meet a deadline. We're best friends, though: she'll only find that out by reading this. And Janelle Monáe is keeping me on my A-game – secretly, I feel that I have to go out and crush her. My heroes are Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell, Stevie Wonder, Earth, Wind and Fire, the Emotions, Chaka Khan and the Doobie Brothers. And the third are the ones who are manufactured. The second are the ones who emulate them. The first are the ones who bleed, sweat and die for this. I think that's part of what art is made of. Yes, I do I suffer bleeding, sweating, crying, suffocating, being crushed. When I was 15, I wrote a letter to myself saying: 'I know it's going to happen for you.' Ten years later, when I was 25, it happened.

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