Quotes from Ari Lennox

I'm always going to take an experience and a fire beat and marry it all together with adult melodies. I try to paint, just like Frank Ocean paints with his lyrics. I try in similar ways to paint my life into these songs.

I'd be at these different clubs passing out my business cards and fliers. Then the club would end, the light would come on and all my business cards would be on the floor.

Grandma Holly told me at three years old that I had a voice of an angel, and I just never stopped singing.

Howard University - HoChi - they make the best Philly cheesesteak I've ever had - way better than Philly.

It's just really hard to commit to clean eating, and then sometimes you don't want to eat cold salads. Sometimes you want that warm comfort food.

I was scared of planes and then also just got this job. It was $10 an hour. To me, that was way more important than meeting J. Cole.

But yeah, so many people are just not very genuine online. I caught myself looking for my ex, and a lot of these people that I would swipe right on, I'm meeting them in real life and they're just not that guy at all.

You just want fame so bad. You want success so bad. You just believe anybody who conjures up a pretty contract and they're telling you all these sweet nothings I guess.

Could I be a good mom? That's a dream, I pray that I'll be the best mom ever. But I don't know. It's so important to me.

Like, even going to Duke Ellington School of the Arts, like, they slept on me. I think they thought I was talented, but for whatever reason, they didn't want to give me a lot of solos or any type of just love like that. But I don't know. I think that's what encouraged me to grind so hard.

I don't have good discipline at all.

Academically I was never that great and I was not really into school. I don't know, I just really had a problem focusing but singing always came naturally.

I'm so thankful for 'Backseat' because it's doing so much. It's almost at two million listens on Spotify. It's changed my life. It was the song that Dreamville really pushed and they just really made it explode, and I'm just so thankful.

At the end of the day, I was getting really close to quitting. I was starting to accept that maybe I'm just going to be a SoundCloud singer, and that's when Dreamville came and saved me.

Yeah, I believe in all the wild, witchcraft stuff. I don't like to dabble in that, but I believe they all know something.

I just was always singing. I didn't know if it was good or not, but my grandma, she told me that I sounded like an angel.

Artists tend to get this thing called demo-itis, and I'm extremely guilty of that.

My dad would always play Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, and Anita Baker, so I fell in love with them. I would try to make my voice sound like theirs.

I've been trying to be a singer ever since I was 2 years old and I'm a whole 27 years old now so it's like, things can happen or they can't. It's a humbling experience every year, every day.

Yeah, the first contract I signed, that was the first time I realized, Oh man, never mind, I don't want to do this anymore, but it was too late. I realized it was a bad thing because I wanted to try out for 'American Idol' and all these different things couldn't do that because I was in this contract.

My best writing is not outside of the beat. I'm 99 percent influenced by the beat first, and then the words just flow.

My favorite style inspirations are between Rihanna and Diana Ross.

I know it may come off cheesy, but if somebody's going to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars, even more into you, you want to make sure you can return that; you want to make sure they feel good about their investment.

I remember watching `Apollo' with my other grandma - I have so many grandmas - and seeing these young girls sing... I knew in that moment that I wanted to sing.