It's difficult as an artist sometimes. There's a lot of pressure when it's your first album. You want to make something that's meaningful and timeless, not something that's trendy.

I'm a big Gorillaz fan.

I grew up being very different and being ready to fight people. I wanted to stand up for myself, and I wanted to not let anyone think they know me based on appearances, so I was always just fighting back with people.

I feel like fashion is about being innovative and being able to turn something into something else, making it cool, and making it your own.

I've done my own videos, I do my own styling, so I feel like I've just always been a visual artist... I was one of those kids who wanted to make my own clothes and take pictures of everything. Everything inspired me, and everything felt like art around me.

I don't like to see people using their power over others, trying to hurt people who are weak or poor or people with darker skin or anyone who doesn't have as much privilege. It makes me so angry. I want to fight for people. I want to be able to make some kind of difference in the world.

No matter where you are, what point in your life you're at, it's not the end.

Every time I go out to do shows, it just becomes a little bit more real and a little bit more full, so I'm excited just to see it hit its next level.

If my life is a movie - in the movie, there's always the bad part. There's also the parts where you're down and out, and there are parts where everything's amazing.

N.E.R.D. was also from - not too far from where I was from growing up. For a lot of people who make music, that was a huge influence in teen years.

Music is your way to change the frequencies of everything around you and move your own body, move your whole environment.

I'm just inspired by life and, growing up, I listened to all types of different sounds, genres, and areas of music.

We're all born into whatever citizenship, circumstances, or class we happen to be born into. Immigrants and so many people in the working class work so hard every day for nickels and pennies and scraps to just barely get by and then realize that this precious life has been completely drained out of us.

Diplo kept asking me who styled my 'What They Say' video. I was like, 'No, that's just my clothes!'

Being able to incorporate my language into songs is really cool. It's really cool to see that people are susceptible to it. It helps with writing a lot to turn off one language and then go to another.

When I'm making a song, I try not to think about audience or genres. It's free-flowing. Natural.

I'm naturally sort of a sad person, and that comes out in my music, but when I realized how many people were listening to it... I wanted to be a little more conscious about what I was putting out and what people were going to be taking from it.

I'm Colombian-American. My father wanted me to have American citizenship, but he wanted to raise me in Colombia.

I was always into music and stuff, so I would always make songs since I was little.

I love a good old-school reggaeton song.

I've always been someone who, without wanting to or without trying to, I draw attention to myself sometimes in negative ways. It made me sharp, and it made me quick.

That's the best kind of music: the stuff that happens based off intuition.

You're always taught that the world is so competitive. You're taught that it's not very likely for you to become successful and that odds are you're going to be a struggling artist for the rest of your life.

It's really not easy to be an artist. It's not easy to put yourself out there and be honest. I'm making things that are really happening to me, and it's not easy to share that with the world.