Jessie Reyez

“I feel like truth resonates, and you can taste when something is synthetic.”

“I was an awful singer when I was younger.”

“I'm appreciating every single bit of success I get, no matter how small.”

“I purposely try to make my music cinematic. I try to inspire visuals even though I'm only an instrument of sound.”

“I feel like humans, when you're faced with decisions, you can go up and down: duality.”

“To be blunt, I feel like lyricism in Spanish is of a different quality than English. You can get really poetic in Spanish, but I feel like if you do that in English, you risk sounding cheesy. In Spanish, it's never that. It's always this deep, passionate, beautiful imagery; it's painted different, a different color.”

“At Afropunk, everyone can be themselves, and I think that's beautiful.”

“My demons are not that easy to shake.”

“I love my smart, supportive, if-I-see-something-I'm-going-to-speak-up type of men.”

“I don't know how other people have a topic or have a goal when making a song, like, 'Let's write about this, or let's write about that.' It's kind of difficult for me. Personally, I like vibing out and freestyling.”

“The key to having something beautiful is being able to convey a normal human emotion but say it in a way that's never been said.”

“I'm just happy to know that no part of me thinks that I made it. Everything in me says you need to keep going, keep working.”

“I love soul music.”

“In life, unfortunately, I've had multiple experiences where people that I thought I could depend on have switched up, or I've caught them in lies, and their true colours have shown.”

“I'm a child of extremes.”

“I feel like it's dangerous to get complacent and celebrate too much... You can't get comfortable.”

“If you consume something that's poisonous, you don't consciously think of vomiting; your body just does it. It's a reflex. When I'm happy, I don't instantly feel the need to get rid of that feeling. But when I'm sad, I think maybe that's what happens.”

“I'm very meticulous.”

“I feel like my objective in music is to take a hammer and nail and chip away a piece of my heart and give it to someone, so I feel, with merch, it's a tangible parallel of that.”

“To be honest with you, the fact that people vibe with my music is just a really positive byproduct of something that is just a reflex to me. The fact that people even care to listen means a lot to me.”