Dawn Richard

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

“I've grown so much in the music industry. From 'GoldenHeart,' it was just about me and the music and me in this dream. With 'BlackHeart,' its more about me and who I am and what role I play in my own life and in the business.”

“When I look half naked on stage, it's not because I'm trying to be sexy but because I am dancing and want to be mobile enough to move.”

“I want to show that you can be just as amazing as labels and compete as a business and work as a business even though you're an artist.”

“I watched my parents lose everything, from a house to birth certificates. We were homeless for about six months, then we stayed in Baltimore, and my parents got jobs.”

“There is a thing about women that needs to be understood. We don't sit well with being put in a certain place.”

“'Goldenheart' is like a modern-day Joan of Arc. Think of it like medieval times-cum-2045 or Lancelot and Guinevere in 3025. It's a new version of these battles - age-old stories for the now.”

“I believe I am standing firm as a black woman in this industry in a time that it is hard as an artist period.”

“Just as much as you need the people who love you, you need the people who doubt you - to prove them wrong.”

“Fashion is my lover on the side, but I am married to music.”

“I always knew who I was, but everyone else wanted to me to be their 'idea' of the 'right' artist. At times, I even believed them.”

“I want to get up and celebrate something - and why not celebrate being a woman?”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“I did write more mainstream stuff with DK. But you could always tell the records that I wrote in contrast with everybody else's because the format was a bit different. The harmonies were used in a different type of way. Way more metaphors in the mix.”

“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.”

“I started to write my own stories, like small novels, and those novels became poems, and after poems, they became lyrics, and song came from that.”

“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.”

“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.”