Kelis

“Growing up, my mom had a catering business. I used to help her pretty early on and loved doing it. My mom is an amazing cook, and she helped me cultivate a love for food. She taught me that food can be beautiful. We eat not just for survival, but we survive to eat. It's part of who I am.”

“I love lifestyle stuff, I love housewares. I'm really a homebody, honestly. Anything to do with my kitchen, or my house, I'm all about it. I'm working on a sauce line, so that's kind of exciting. I'm a saucier.”

“As a black artist in America, you know, it is so segregated as far as the radio goes and how they position music on the radio.”

“My mom was concerned that us four little black girls have a really well-balanced life. She wanted us to be around people like us, but we also went to private school and traveled all the time. Now I fit in most places because I've been most places.”

“Being the ideal of a strong woman means utilizing all the things that God gives you. People are always saying to me, 'You're a strong female, so why are you wearing a bikini on the cover of that magazine?' Being a strong woman is misconstrued to be something evil and ugly.”

“In my life, looking at other women who have been pregnant while writing, I always feel like it's kind of their most musical or the closest to themselves. I think for me it's such a validating moment, you know. I always knew I wanted to have kids, and I've been making music all my life.”

“As a child, I'd help my mum cook, and it was ridiculous - she had the correct gadget or utensil for everything. 'Stop! Don't use that, I have exactly the right utensil.' After I left home, I survived on cup-a-meals and never saw myself as being like her. Now I've become her.”

“I studied to be a chef as a side thing, a little hobby that I enjoyed doing, but I ended up falling madly in love with the food and the lifestyle.”

“There's a difference between a pop star and an artist. Pop stars have to be perfect all the time; an artist is allowed, on occasion, to suck. And I put myself in that category because I sometimes suck. I'm not trying to please the masses. It's not going to happen, so I don't try.”

“As a chef, if I can taste something, I can basically figure out what's in it.”

“I don't think people know me at all. At the end of the day, if you see me in sequins and glitter out at a club, you might think that's all there is. But, you know, it's just glitter. My friends who I've known since I was 17 - they know who I am.”

“I had always been a fan of Nas, but I never met him. This is the one guy in the industry who's, like, the phantom rapper.”

“There's a point where you think, 'What else will I do if I don't do music?' It becomes your identity when it never should have been. But food ignited a fire in me, and I came right back to music because it no longer felt like a job. It was a really powerful thing for me.”

“Everything I do has a certain quality, a certain flair, a certain flavor. I like to eat the way I like to dress, the way I listen to music: put it all together, and it's a great party.”

“Everyone's attention span is getting shorter. As a result, everything - films, music, art - gets watered down and dumber. Every now and again, you get something great, but not often.”

“Am I R&B because I'm black? Am I pop because I have a song called 'Milkshake'? Or can I just be who the hell I am? Good Lord, people make it seem like we're doing heart transplants here, but we're just making music!”

“The album 'Kelis Was Here' sucked the life out of me, and so I went off and studied to be a Cordon Bleu chef. What's great about food is that it's less about who you know and what you look like, and more about if you're any good.”

“I'm a multi-platinum recording artist; my passion is food.”

“I can't live without Eucerin cream, lip gloss, gum, nail polish, and sparkly things.”

“My audience is made up of such bizarre, rare people. They're very sparse and scattered; it's not like a huge body of people.”