"I like to borrow forms and quotes and use a lot of allusions, in both poetry and music."
"When I started writing poetry, it was always in very hip-hop influenced spaces: Someone would teach a Nas song side-by-side with a Gwendolyn Brooks poem, and we'd talk about the connections between those things."
"I read 'Song of Solomon' by Toni Morrison in college, and it just blew my mind."
"There is a lot of history buried in Chicago that I still have yet to discover."
"I have a band called M&O. We were working on our first album in 2011 or 2012. We were looking for people to collaborate with, and I met Chance through a Young Chicago Authors poetry slam."
"There is so much talent in Milwaukee, and such diversity."
"My mentors were very good."
"When you're in a choir, it's about blending into how everyone else sounds."
"With lyrics, being a poet gave me a different approach than other people."
"They say Chicago is for haters. No one will just sweat each other and say, 'Oh, you're so good,' if you're not. Which is another reason I'm inspired to stay."
"I read this book when I was young. It's about a black girl growing up in Heaven, Ohio. The cover has a black girl with clouds behind her. It was the first book cover I ever saw with a girl that looked like me."
"When I was a kid, getting on Lake Shore Drive from the south side to go downtown was magical."
"A lot of people get Chicago wrong. I've developed this protective feeling about how we're portrayed, and at the same time, I'm acutely aware of the issues we face and the root causes of these issues."
"It's important to me that there's not just one story told about our city. 'LSD' is an ode to Chicago, a song for the complicated love I have for my city."
"'HEAVN' is about black girlhood, about Chicago, about the people we miss who have gone on to prepare a place for us somewhere else, about the city/world we aspire to live in. I hope this album encourages listeners to love themselves and love each other."
"For black and brown people, caring for ourselves and each other is not a neutral act. It is a necessary and radical part of the struggle to create a more just society. Our healing and survival are essential to the fight."
"It was through poetry I learned just to appreciate my own voice and to not think of my voice in terms of what it needs to be able to do, but what it can do."
"I'm interested in figuring out what freedom songs would sound like in 2016."
"My hope is that 'Blk Girl Soldier' is a freedom song for black women today who are fighting the macro- and microaggressions of daily life in our city/country/world."
"I don't sound like other people. My voice isn't as loud and can't do certain things athletically."
"My mentor made me say a poem over and over. 'Stop! That's not your voice. Start again.' I was sobbing by the end, but it drilled into my head that my voice is important."
"Part of our pedagogy is, you report on what's going on in your neighborhood and your city."
"Part of what I like about living in Chicago is it's not easy. The breath of the city, the everyday challenge of it, is good. It forces you to grow and push yourself."
"My artistic manifesto exists in the world as poetry. So even though most of the things that I've done have been on other people's projects or could be pigeonholed in certain ways, that's not how I perceive myself."
"In church, the music is for everyone. People are singing off tune, loud; they're not ashamed - it's for their healing. That's kind of just what I strive for, that feeling."
