"I planned my success. I knew it was going to happen."

"I have the ability to sing with emotion and feeling, but if you say I sound like Billie Holiday, that's cool. Let's look at who Billie was: she was this person, this singer, this beautiful diva who could move the audience with the slightest gesture of her hand."

"It's almost like a lot of black people in America, a lot of young black men, are born with this cloud over their heads. It's their penitentiary cloud, this philosophy we all have, that it's harder for us."

"But now I realize that this record business really needs me. No one else is trying to take a chance or do something different."

"I consider my musical ability to be a gift from the Creator. It's not that I try to work hard or nothing like that, it's a gift, it was given to me, and I appreciate it."

"I'm free. I just do what I want, say what I want, say how I feel, and I don't try to hurt nobody. I just try to make sure that I don't compromise my art in any kind of way, and I think people respect that."

"The kind of music or the kind of arrangements that I do, the kind of musicians I choose, is just what I like to hear."

"What I work hard at doing is staying on a path of being kind and showing and proving that I'm a good person to society. That's hard. The talent, that's a gift. I just came here like that."

"Hopefully my music is medicine, some type of antidote for something or some kind of explanation or just to feel good."

"From then on, I realized this is what I want to do, what I'm supposed to do: Giving energy and receiving it back through applause. I love it. That's my world. I love it. I enjoy it. I live for it."

"What does music mean to me? I don't think I would really be much without it, without it coming through me. It's my means of communication, my means of growth, my means of transportation from one point in my life to another."

"I think a lot of people have lost respect for the individual, you know, the individual, the person who doesn't conform."

"And I figured out that the reason I couldn't get through the day as well as I can now is because I had too many things on my mind, on my plate, you know, for one person to have. So I started to eliminate some of the things that were too heavy to carry and unnecessary."

"I don't read music or anything, so when I produce, I go basically by ear."

"I knew it would happen. I knew I'd be No. 1. I'm a new artist; I don't know the rules. Nobody told me it wouldn't happen."

"I love putting the music together. It's like art."

"Marvin Gaye is one of my favorite revolutionaries. He spoke from his heart, his mind. That's what I want to do."

"I started performing at two or three on a tape recorder, one of those little flat recorders where you just push play and record."

"Music and the music business are two different things."

"Man, I don't want to have nothing to do with computers. I don't want the government in my business."

"Personally, I don't choose any particular religion or symbol or group of words or teachings to define me. That's between me and the most high. You know, my higher self. The Creator."

"I thought the Billie Holiday comparison was beautiful. I think, Wow, what a wonderful, creative, helpful spirit. She's someone who wanted to help others by sharing her emotion. That's what I do, too, so I think that's a great comparison."

"I believed in myself, and I've always worked very, very hard as an artist, and I am an artist in every sense of the word."

"I love to leave the interpretation of my music up to the listener. It's fun to see what they'll say it is."

"I'm not satisfied with the explanations I get from tv or from school."

"The music business is motivated by money. Music is motivated by energy and feelings."

"I have a master plan as an artist. I've always said I'm not going to be punching nobody's clock. I will work as an artist to survive in this world."

"I'll dabble here and there in different forms of the art, but the label has me locked down like a slave so, of course, I'll be doing albums during this time."

"I don't feel like I need to preach to the world or nothing like that. I just feel like I share what I say, and if listeners get it, they get it. And I never underestimate the audience's ability to feel me."

"I am not systematic at all when it comes to religion. I just love life. And I'm not judgmental. And I'm a vegetarian."

"Anything that had to do with art I been doing all my life. It was a gift. It's nothing I work real hard at doing."

"Well, if you look at all of the cultures in America, this is a great opportunity for us to really get acquainted with the rest of the world. America is the only place you can do that, but we don't have sense enough to take advantage of that."

"I grew up listening to old soul."

"Oh, yeah, I see the world differently now. Actually, when I first had the baby, I was breast-feeding him for two years straight. So we were together for two years of his life, every single day, all hours of the day. So I was two people, and I eventually morphed back into one."

"What makes me furious, not just because we're in an interview, but I don't like when writers take your words and put them somewhere else, in the wrong context in their own article about you."

"As Erykah Badu, it has nothing to do with me, the way I look, my hair wrap, my style, it's about you and what you feel for my music. If I can make you feel like the way that people who influenced me made me feel, that's completion."