You don't know how far you can go until you push it.
Dawn Richard
I wake up every day in a different headspace, so on any given day, my hairstyle will change.
There is a thing about women that needs to be understood. We don't sit well with being put in a certain place.
Music and dance is part of everything in New Orleans. So I grew up appreciating it all.
I wanted to make an album that sounded like a release of inhibitions, really getting away from the idea that you have to be anything other than in that moment.
I would describe my personal style as putting Twiggy and Yoko Ono together. It is hobo with no rules.
I started to write my own stories, like small novels, and those novels became poems, and after poems, they became lyrics, and song came from that.
I do not have a history in set design. I have a history in art. I draw. But I learned set design when I couldn't afford to have a team and I didn't want to look like I was indie. I wanted to give fans the visual.
When my dad went to college to get his master's from Loyola, he was playing Debussy and Chopin and Beethoven. But he played all that New Orleans stuff, too. I would go with my dad to gigs, pick up the piano and the speakers, and I would be like his roadie.
Songwriting was my own journey. I never fit in with structure in songwriting.
'Redemption' sounds like a jubilee. Like a second line, if you will.
You don't need validation from other people. You've gotta find it within yourself and sit in it and roll with it.
There's a fine line between artist and product. I don't think the industry purposely does it, but I think that's just the way they maneuver. You have to be careful that doesn't become your story, where you become a product, and your art is tarnished because you're just seen as a tool to make money.
I don't really feel there's rules in my everyday wear. I kind of do whatever the hell I want to do.
Be exactly who you are. You can fit in any space you see yourself in. Be fearless.
I believe I am standing firm as a black woman in this industry in a time that it is hard as an artist period.
When I was 4, I had a schedule. I was playing softball. My brother was playing football. My parents were teachers, and they'd owned businesses. We like to work hard. Work and then books. Books and then work. We just knew that we had to excel. It sounds militant, but trust me, it was fun.
There's always going to be a fight between mainstream and underground because the mainstream is a very small bubble, and the underground scene is a very small bubble, and they both see themselves as secret societies. But I never saw it that way. I always thought music was open to all things.
Instagram is just something I like to do. I feel it's the best way to portray who you are.
I don't take myself too seriously.
There's definitely that tribal Africana thing going on in my sound. It's that marching band, second-line music, that Creole-influence in the kick, and the snare that drives everything for me. I think it's really what's separated my sound from a lot of the R&B and pop music out there.
My director, Monty Marsh, is really awesome - I've been working with him for years now.
I'd only do a deal with a label if it allowed me to still be indie and have that indie mentality. I have to have creative control.
I think, my entire life, I was a bit different. And I didn't think I was different; I just kinda always stuck out.
To create and do something no one else has done before - that feeling beats anything else I've felt.
'Redemption' is about understanding myself and not worrying about my relationship with the industry.
Fashion is my lover on the side, but I am married to music.
I like being in charge. I like being able to control my own destiny and ideas.
Dreams rise like the sun and set like the sun: One minute, it is high and bright; the next minute, you might lose it.
My uncle is in the hall of fame for creating by hand some of the most intricate Indian Mardi Gras garb.
I write for myself. It's therapy.
I don't wish homelessness on anyone, especially when you come from where your parents work hard.
Just as much as you need the people who love you, you need the people who doubt you - to prove them wrong.
People want to peg you as alternative R&B when they hear soul or see the color of your skin. It's comfortable when people see artists of color or artists that come from a different country to put that brand on us. It's just not as linear as that.
I can be a little messy and wild and carefree with my creativity as a solo artist. In a group, there's a certain structure, and everyone has a part to play, and being a solo artist, I can do as I please.
'Armor On' explains why I needed armor in the first place. Sonically, you'll hear this battle of, 'I love you, no I don't. I love you, I hate you.' That's what you'll feel. You see the story kind of fight against itself.
Originally, I was set on going to Hawaii Pacific University. We visited the campus in Hawaii. I was gonna be a Rainbow Warrior. I was gonna play softball. I was gonna major in marine biology. Everything was set. Then my dad was like, 'So you're not gonna do music? If you do go to Hawaii, there's no studios there, baby girl.'
Everyone who knows Puff knows Puff rolls with himself. His hustle is money. That's what he does.
My dad was a teacher. He has a Masters in music. He taught elementary school, and he played gigs his whole life, and we lived good.
I'm big on showing people versatility. I'm constantly trying to push myself to break barriers and the idea that we have to stay in one lane.
'Goldenheart' is like a modern-day Joan of Arc. Think of it like medieval times-cum-2045 or Lancelot and Guinevere in 3025. It's a new version of these battles - age-old stories for the now.
'Blackheart' was the moment for me to really open up and let people into the world that is me.
My music speaks of warriors. It speaks of women being kings and this sense of pride of being more, even though you have less.
I connect so much with Peter Gabriel's sound because, to me, he always had that South African vibe. His drums were always something to move to: it was almost like Calypso. I'm a big fan.
How many people can say they had Anna Wintour on a record? Not even an album, just a mixtape? It's audacious, disrespectful, and I feel like it's a little bit raw, and that's what Dirty Money is.
You have to put time into the art to do it, and you have to know that what you'll get out of it is not a financial or a fame thing. It'll just be the pleasure of being an artist. And I'm cool with that.
When I was growing up, there was no one. There were very few black women in tech; there were very few black women in the fashion game. We didn't have our Grace Jones - Grace Jones was before my time. We didn't really have a lot of black women in electronic and punk who were celebrated in the same levels as, say, your big mega-superstars.
The black geeks of the world, we feel like we don't have a home.
My grandmother had a Ph.D in library science, so I grew up in a library, and I would appreciate those books and the smell of them and how they'd have these series, and it was cool to me. I always felt like, if I had an opportunity, I'd create an album that felt like a series.
I always treat shows as though they could belong on either platform. I always design it for the bigger stage, but I love it on the smaller stage.
