Quotes from Dawn Richard

'Blackheart' is purely falling into the electronic world and pushing the envelope.

'The Red Era' is for everybody. Every gay, every fluid, every black, every white.

The problem with Danity Kane is everybody wanted to play everybody's role, and when you're in a group like that, that can't survive.

The black geeks of the world, we feel like we don't have a home.

My dad was a teacher. He has a Masters in music. He taught elementary school, and he played gigs his whole life, and we lived good.

I write for myself. It's therapy.

How many people can say they had Anna Wintour on a record? Not even an album, just a mixtape? It's audacious, disrespectful, and I feel like it's a little bit raw, and that's what Dirty Money is.

I'm not mainstream. You gotta find me.

When I was 4, I had a schedule. I was playing softball. My brother was playing football. My parents were teachers, and they'd owned businesses. We like to work hard. Work and then books. Books and then work. We just knew that we had to excel. It sounds militant, but trust me, it was fun.

I don't wish homelessness on anyone, especially when you come from where your parents work hard.

I've had two platinum albums. I have worked with thousands of people. But the most rewarding feeling is to see people on Twitter say, 'Do you see what Dawn and them are doing? They are number one.' It's the most rewarding feeling because of all the tears, all the bad stuff, and the people that said I couldn't do it.

I wanted to make an album that sounded like a release of inhibitions, really getting away from the idea that you have to be anything other than in that moment.

You don't know how far you can go until you push it.

'Redemption' is about understanding myself and not worrying about my relationship with the industry.

It's a lot of work being an indie artist, but it's worth it.

There's a fine line between artist and product. I don't think the industry purposely does it, but I think that's just the way they maneuver. You have to be careful that doesn't become your story, where you become a product, and your art is tarnished because you're just seen as a tool to make money.

I had no idea that what I thought was my low wasn't really my low. That's what a lot of people think - then life reminds them, 'No, there's lower.'

I got in the audition line called 'Making the Band' because I wanted to be in a band. If I didn't, I would have done 'American Idol.'

When I get inspired, I give out free music. If you look at my track record from the beginning, that's always what I've done. I've never changed.

A lot of 'Blackheart' was me, literally in a dark room, confessing my sins; Poe was the influence for that album. But that melancholy has a hopefulness - in every Poe story, there is always a moral at the end.

There's definitely that tribal Africana thing going on in my sound. It's that marching band, second-line music, that Creole-influence in the kick, and the snare that drives everything for me. I think it's really what's separated my sound from a lot of the R&B and pop music out there.

I always treat shows as though they could belong on either platform. I always design it for the bigger stage, but I love it on the smaller stage.

I lived in the library with my grandmother as a child. I still love the smell of books; the library card is still my friend.

My grandmother had a Ph.D in library science, so I grew up in a library, and I would appreciate those books and the smell of them and how they'd have these series, and it was cool to me. I always felt like, if I had an opportunity, I'd create an album that felt like a series.