And I figured out that the reason I couldn't get through the day as well as I can now is because I had too many things on my mind, on my plate, you know, for one person to have. So I started to eliminate some of the things that were too heavy to carry and unnecessary.
Anything that had to do with art I been doing all my life. It was a gift. It's nothing I work real hard at doing.
As Erykah Badu, it has nothing to do with me, the way I look, my hair wrap, my style, it's about you and what you feel for my music. If I can make you feel like the way that people who influenced me made me feel, that's completion.
But I do learn a lot from each thing, because everything is necessary. We're all here for a reason, not just to group up with your own group.
But now I realize that this record business really needs me. No one else is trying to take a chance or do something different.
From then on, I realized this is what I want to do, what I'm supposed to do: Giving energy and receiving it back through applause. I love it. That's my world. I love it. I enjoy it. I live for it.
Hopefully my music is medicine, some type of antidote for something or some kind of explanation or just to feel good.
How I got the name, Apples, I do not know. A boy in my class decided to call me that because he thought I was cute.
However, our society thinks that success means having a car and a lot of money and looking as white as you can or as American as you can. Or if you're white, looking as exotic as you can. We don't have any idea that it's about our hearts and our souls and how we treat the next person.
I actually started writing it because I was inspired by my own personal growth. You know, I was happy I was able to assess things a little bit better.
I am not systematic at all when it comes to religion. I just love life. And I'm not judgmental. And I'm a vegetarian.
I believed in myself, and I've always worked very, very hard as an artist, and I am an artist in every sense of the word.
I consider my musical ability to be a gift from the Creator. It's not that I try to work hard or nothing like that, it's a gift, it was given to me, and I appreciate it.
I don't feel like I need to preach to the world or nothing like that. I just feel like I share what I say, and if listeners get it, they get it. And I never underestimate the audience's ability to feel me.
I don't read music or anything, so when I produce, I go basically by ear.
I enjoyed working with D'Angelo a lot. He's a true artist.
I grew up in south Dallas, Texas.
I grew up listening to old soul.
I have a master plan as an artist. I've always said I'm not going to be punching nobody's clock. I will work as an artist to survive in this world.
I have the ability to sing with emotion and feeling, but if you say I sound like Billie Holiday, that's cool. Let's look at who Billie was: she was this person, this singer, this beautiful diva who could move the audience with the slightest gesture of her hand.
I knew it would happen. I knew I'd be No. 1. I'm a new artist; I don't know the rules. Nobody told me it wouldn't happen.
I love putting the music together. It's like art.
I love to leave the interpretation of my music up to the listener. It's fun to see what they'll say it is.
I mean that's a big part of our existence here on earth, the personal relationship we have with the person that we love, with the person that we make love to, with the person that we share our lives with. We expect a lot of things back from our loved one, and the lesson is to accept and not expect.
I mean, I was producing, as well as writing, as well as singing, and directing the video, I mean, all things I chose to do.
I planned my success. I knew it was going to happen.
I started performing at two or three on a tape recorder, one of those little flat recorders where you just push PLAY and RECORD.
I think a lot of people have lost respect for the individual, you know, the individual, the person who doesn't conform.
I thought the Billie Holiday comparison was beautiful. I think, Wow, what a wonderful, creative, helpful spirit. She's someone who wanted to help others by sharing her emotion. That's what I do, too, so I think that's a great comparison.
I was better, 'cause now I'm responsible for someone whose whole reason for being I helped shape.
I was new again. I never thought I had an opportunity to walk in and not have people expecting things.
I'll dabble here and there in different forms of the art, but the label has me locked down like a slave so, of course, I'll be doing albums during this time.
I'm a critic, man, I'm really hard on people, but when I listen to Omar I just listen. He's like medicine, I feel like I can be healed.
I'm free. I just do what I want, say what I want, say how I feel, and I don't try to hurt nobody. I just try to make sure that I don't compromise my art in any kind of way, and I think people respect that.
I'm not satisfied with the explanations I get from tv or from school.
I'm only in competition with my last level. It don't have nothing to do with music or anything.
It's almost like a lot of black people in America, a lot of young black men, are born with this cloud over their heads. It's their penitentiary cloud, this philosophy we all have, that it's harder for us.
It's not wrong for us to be together, it's wrong for us to put down each other and depreciate each other's values. Black people have been depreciated a lot here in America; that's a true thing.
Man, I don't want to have nothing to do with computers. I don't want the government in my business.
Marvin Gaye is one of my favorite revolutionaries. He spoke from his heart, his mind. That's what I want to do.
Most of the time, you don't even know your mamma have a gun, you know? And when she pulls it out, and shows it to you, it's something serious. And the way life is to me right now, we're at a very detrimental time.
Music and the music business are two different things.
My grandmother was very influential in my life. She was very religious and very systematic about her religion.
Oh, yeah, I see the world differently now. Actually, when I first had the baby, I was breast-feeding him for two years straight. So we were together for two years of his life, every single day, all hours of the day. So I was two people, and I eventually morphed back into one.
Personally, I don't choose any particular religion or symbol or group of words or teachings to define me. That's between me and the most high. You know, my higher self. The Creator.
The kind of music or the kind of arrangements that I do, the kind of musicians I choose, is just what I like to hear.
The music business is motivated by money. Music is motivated by energy and feelings.
The truth is, there are millions and billions of particles of atomic memory of different things in my music.
We put a lot of emphasis on relationships, to the point where often that's our whole life. But if your relationship ain't going right, your life is kinda wack.
Well, I have an agent who saw my videos and thought that I'd be good in movies. She's often sent scripts, and I told her the kinds of roles that I liked.
Well, if you look at all of the cultures in America, this is a great opportunity for us to really get acquainted with the rest of the world. America is the only place you can do that, but we don't have sense enough to take advantage of that.
What does music mean to me? I don't think I would really be much without it, without it coming through me. It's my means of communication, my means of growth, my means of transportation from one point in my life to another.
What I work hard at doing is staying on a path of being kind and showing and proving that I'm a good person to society. That's hard. The talent, that's a gift. I just came here like that.
What makes me furious, not just because we're in an interview, but I don't like when writers take your words and put them somewhere else, in the wrong context in their own article about you.
What singing means to me, I never did consider myself a singer, I just let people watch me feel music and how it comes through me. I've worked on it and practiced a lot. I mean, music, I dance to it, and singing is just one way of getting it out of me.
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