I actually failed my first license test. I got an automatic fail. I guess I had been doing well but she had to pull the emergency brake so obviously there was a problem. I remember them handing me my fail paper and me just bursting into tears.
You always have to play it safe, no matter who you're fighting. I don't fight any easy guys. I haven't maybe ever in the UFC. To me, you've always got to be safe. But I don't want to have my foot on the brake at all. My foot is going to be on the gas, and I'm going to be smart at everything.
When I sing for myself, I sing in a more free, athletic way. When I face an audience, there is always some fear that makes me put the brakes on a bit.
It was an unbelievable experience! The brakes, the g-forces and the power of the engine are beyond description. Thanks to BMW and WilliamsF1 for giving me this chance to test. The test team looked after me brilliantly and I learnt plenty.
My dad always told me you have to be as quick as you can straight away out of the box. Some people say, 'Feel your way into it; build it up.' No. My dad would say, 'Straight away, you have to be there.' And I think that helps to warm up your tyres and brakes to be on it a bit more from lap one.
Behind me the branches of a wasted and sterile existence are cracking.
Games are advancing in terms of storytelling and trying to create a character, and it's a brand new audience for me.
Marlon Brando. The finest actor who ever lived. He was my idol when I was 13. He's done enough work to last two lifetimes. Everything I do, I think: Can Brando play this with me?
If I am duly compared to Marlon Brando at all, well, I can only think of The Teahouse of the 'Shanghai Noon,' that they're comparing me to that!
I love to put on lotion. Sometimes I'll watch TV and go into a lotion trance for an hour. I try to find brands that don't taste bad in case anyone wants to taste me.
I have inherited two of the most important brands in hip-hop, Def Jam and Roc-A-Fella. Reid and Universal Music Group have given me the opportunity to manage the companies I have contributed to my whole career. I feel this is a giant step for me and the entire artist community.
When I started singing, I was covering Lauryn Hill, Brandy, and all the girl groups of the '90s. It's just what I would listen to and what I was singing when anybody asked me to sing for them.
One musical that deeply influenced me - and continues to do so - is the 1997 ABC TV movie of Rodgers and Hammerstein's 'Cinderella,' starring Brandy, with Whitney Houston as the Fairy Godmother and Whoopi Goldberg as the prince's mom.
I'm a mash-up of everyone. My influences would be Michael Jackson, Brandy, Aaliyah - those types of people. So if you can imagine them - and with me taking them, and then putting my own twist and the influence on it - that's musically what I would sound like.
I always say the person who taught me how to sing indirectly because I listened to her all the time was Brandy. I fell in love with her voice when I was six years old. I always loved Brandy.
I'm big-busted... I can't always wear the cutest bras, and it makes me so mad.
When I was a youth, to be called 'African' was a diss. At school, the African kids used to lie and say they were Jamaican. So when I first came in the game, and I'm saying lyrics like, 'I make Nigerians proud of their tribal scars/ My bars make you push up your chest like bras,' that was a big deal for me.
Nothing shocks me anymore. I've embraced men in thongs, I've embraced women with padded bras. I mean, I can embrace Larry King saying 'fierce.'
Bras are like accessories to me.
I remember watching Margaret Cho with my grandmother on TV. She was my hero, not only because she was funny, but because she showed me that it's okay to be yourself, that it's okay to be a brash yellow girl and to be a strong and brave woman.
