Quotes from Gabriella Wilson

I was like, 'Wow, Tommy Hilfiger wants to work with little old me.' All the dots connected, we had a meeting, and everything started to come together.

We use social media as a platform to speak on issues that we feel passionate about and I see people debating on Twitter all the time about social injustices.

It took me a while to want to do interviews.

I think most women, we have intuition. We always know what we always want to find out. We always want to be wrong, and we hate when we're right at the end of the day. People say we love to be right. That's not true. We don't like to be right, because usually we know when it's the truth.

As a person, I'm just trying to be better than I was yesterday and continue to elevate.

The fact that I can travel around the world doing what I love is such a blessing. I've learned that traveling is such an important thing; there's so many beautiful things out there and we get worried about such little things.

I'm so emotional when it comes to even the smallest thing.

I wanted people to just accept the music for what it is without any judgement and being anonymous was the best way to do that.

I'm half-Filipino and Filipinos love karaoke.

One of the first CDs I ever bought was Alicia Keys's 'MTV Unplugged' album. That album is the one I would take home and listen to on my Walkman, in my room, before I had an iPod. I learned most of the songs on piano.

As a black woman, I've always had to work hard to earn my respect as a musician - and as a young woman, too. As a writer, in certain sessions or certain rooms people think, 'Who's kid is this? Who's this little girl?' I've had to prove myself.

I guess 16, 17, 18, that whole period was a dark time for me. I guess it was a hormonal thing, going through all those changes as a young woman, learning who you are and being comfortable with yourself, and also, which goes along with that, boys. It was definitely an unhappy, 'Who am I?' period. 'Who am I gonna be?'

As a young woman, I experienced high school and heartbreak, and the music I started to write was a little bit more poetic, and more inspired by spoken word. The real raw emotional things that sit in the back of our minds, that you were afraid to say? That's how I started to write my music. And that's how 'H.E.R. Volume One' came about.

When you're growing up as a young woman, you develop all of these insecurities, and then there's boys and all of that stuff on top of that.

I've become a voice for young women who are growing up and uncomfortable being vulnerable, uncomfortable with changes, heartbreak - and becoming jaded.

Seeing people Tweet my lyrics and really feeling for me, feeling what I'm feeling... in one of my lyrics I sing about 'the watch I just got for you,' and some girl was like, 'Yes! I bought him a watch!' I can be happy because these women feel me.

Throughout my teenage years or whatever, I've been so uncomfortable, or I've made mistakes and I've felt like I'm the only one who has done that.

People always make me uncomfortable when they ask me: 'Who's this song about?' I feel like I let you read my diary and now we have to have a conversation about it! I already let you read it, let's just leave it at that.

It's scary and uncomfortable releasing music that is close to you.

Some people want the attention, some people want the spotlight, and that just wasn't it for me.

It's a great thing to hear people putting me up to this standard and putting me on this pedestal and expecting greatness from me, but at the end of the day, I'm just trying to be a better me as an artist musically.

Before anybody knew who I was, I was just working on what I love and having fun with it, and I'm sticking with that - because, ultimately, that's what people want to see.

I'd rather have quality over quantity. It's about perfecting each song and making sure it's what you want to do. And then even with what I share it's all very strategic.

I'm always thinking about Prince when I make my music and how genre-less he was and just how versatile and amazing he was on the stage. I'm so inspired by him.