If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe.

My first two records are so simply constructed. The reason isn't because I wanted to make simple music. It's because I don't really have the chops.

What I was going for in the first two albums I didn't necessarily achieve. Because I was young and because it was my first time out. And the second album was such a 'quickie' sort of 'Let's just get it over with!' But the kind of music I make there's a lot of subtlety in it. And I think it takes a couple of listens to actually really get it.

I started writing rhymes first and then put it to the music. I figured out I could lock it to the beat better if I heard the music first. I like to get a lot of tracks put the track up and let the music talk to me about what it's about.

I write the vocals last because I wanted to invent the music first and push the music to the level that I had to compete against it.

The '60s was one of the first times the power of music was used by a generation to bind them together.

I got interested in the idea of music that could make itself in a sense in the mid 1960s really when I first heard composers like Terry Riley and when I first started playing with tape recorders.

First of all the music that people call Latin or Spanish is really African. So Black people need to get the credit for that.

I think I first realized I wanted to be in country music and be an artist when I was 10. And I started dragging my parents to festivals and fairs and karaoke contests and I did that for about a year before I came to Nashville for the first time. I was 11 and I had this demo CD of me singing Dixie Chicks and Leanne Rimes songs.

Stone walls confine a tinker cold iron binds a witch but a musician's music can never be fettered for it lives first in her heart and mind.