Khalid

“Once you're comfortable with the way that you're dressing, you express yourself a lot more, and you're just able to have a lot more fun.”

“There's been a time where I was like, I wanna be a folk singer; no, I wanna sing soul. I want to sing classical music. I want to sing R&B. I want to be on Broadway. I just wanna sing. Whatever comes out of my mouth, that's what I want to do.”

“I've got to thank the city of El Paso for standing behind me.”

“Positivity, confidence, and persistence are key in life, so never give up on yourself.”

“I'm an African-American man with an Afro who isn't your typical athlete - who wasn't as masculine as other guys.”

“I started writing out all of my feelings, and people asked me, 'Have you ever thought of recording your music?' It was something I'd always thought of, but I'd never really had the confidence.”

“I feel like baggy pants are cool.”

“I would classify myself as an individual. That's what I try to stay true with - being myself, 100 percent.”

“I'm a regular guy, and I don't want anyone to look at me as being superior or having a God complex or anything like that, you know? I don't want to walk around like I know everything, because I have so much more room to improve.”

“A lot of people think teenagers haven't gone through anything in their lives - they're not even 20 years old yet. But a twenty-something can go through the same type of experience or heartbreak that a 50-year-old can go through, so why does age matter?”

“My mom raised a self-aware kid. I wasn't like the typical alpha male. I wasn't afraid to sing, you know? I wasn't afraid to be in musicals.”

“It wasn't like I was specifically wanting to write songs about technology. It's just what I lived, what I was experiencing growing up.”

“I feel like we go through different stages of love. When you get a little bit older, love starts to feel different, but you see that love has always been there.”

“I wrote 'Saved' as a form of therapy to get over the fact that I had moved and lost so much of myself.”

“I knew what I wanted and where I wanted to go. I always wanted to entertain and help others.”

“What really keeps me grounded is my fans and the way that I connect with them.”

“Being vulnerable was difficult for me at first because I've said things in my songs about how I felt that I never told anybody.”

“It's my job to accept my youth, to spread my story, to let people know who I am as an individual, because there's so many people who are blinded and think less of me because of my skin color.”

“In my home, we listened to music all the time. I was raised through music, and I've been interested in it since I was three.”

“It's crazy that people are looking to me as a symbol like, 'Oh, he's the voice of the youth. He's this and this and that.' I feel like there's a lot of pressure that comes with it, when people look to you as the face of something.”