- I wanted to give everyone 30 seconds
to introduce themselves, let us know
the pronouns that you use, and what you're up to,
what you're currently working on.
So, you wanna start?
- My pronouns are goddess, so.
And goddess. (laughter)
Yes, and goddess is give power
and give life to kings and queens
and to he's and she's and they and theirs and them.
(laughs)
So yeah, so goddess is a representation
of not being bound by this thing
that they've controlled for so long.
Not male enough, not female enough.
And so I know that the male representation,
they won't claim me as being their representation,
and the female does say, oh, you're not me.
And so, again, I'm beyond that, I'm a goddess.
- It just feels like my world has expanded,
in a lot of ways that I sort of can't even
describe on some level, but I think in terms of like,
the people I connect with and have been connected to,
my songwriting, there's just an openness
that kind of pervades everything
in a different way that's been really exciting
and kind of unexpected, to be honest with you.
So it's, yeah, I haven't, I've honestly found,
yeah, I wasn't really discouraged.
I had like, some conversations with my manager
and my publicist and my girlfriend, obviously,
about how we wanted to do it,
and I think we did it in a way that like,
felt really good and kinda brought people in
to my experience and our experience.
So it was, yeah, it was actually,
it's been a really expansive thing for me.
- So I was incarcerated after foster home and emancipation.
So I did 10 years in a male's institution.
And that was another part I learned
that there was just nothing but hatred for people like me.
And so either I was highly desired
or I was just purely hated for no reason.
What I didn't understand is after I sacrificed so much
for all these people and did so much for all these people
my whole life, how could they just turn their back on me
just because I didn't identify
with the male or female spectrum.
And so I just got to writing,
just writing sitting in my cell.
The guards harassed me, they didn't want me
outside on the yard anyway,
'cause I didn't look like the rest of the inmates.
And so they said I was a threat
to the good order of the facility.
But I was a threat to society just for existing.
And so all these things just came to me,
and I just said, you know what, forget yard.
You know what, I started writing songs
about how people in the yard were like
a monkey in the stage in its quiet stage,
a monkey in a cage in its quiet stage.
That's how I started looking at things.
And so I just sat down, I said, you know what,
I'm not gonna go to yard.
I'm gonna just write down my thoughts.
And I wrote about the church
and I wrote about being an outcast
and how there's an outcast in everybody's life,
and I am her, was this thing that they denied me of.
It was a right that they denied me of,
they said I wasn't her.
And so everything I had experienced
and I was going to experience, they would never honor that.
And so I got the vessel or realized
there was a vessel in prison, actually.
And that's where I knew that there was power to it.
- I think representation of like,
multi-dimensional queer people in the media is so important,
and I feel like even when I was growing up,
I didn't feel like I fully fit
into like, a heteronormative society,
but I felt like ambiguous with my sexuality,
but I felt like even the people who were like,
the queer people represented, I think that they were like,
token people, they were just like this,
it felt like this forced thing.
Like this is like this gay best friend
and like, to all the girls or whatever,
and it just didn't feel like-- - That one black friend
that you talk about. - Yeah, the one token person.
- That you never see.
- Yeah, and so I feel like
it's like beyond important for the media,
that's why I love shows like Euphoria
and shows that are like, really naturally
bringing in those narratives,
those queer narratives into the media.
I think that that's just the most important.
I also think like, executives and like,
high people at the labels and people behind the scenes,
like producers, songwriters, there should be more
queer visibility across the board,
not just with artists, but everyone behind the scenes, too.