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Joan Rivers was my hero.

One of my biggest inspirations growing up was Whitney Houston, so I was devastated to hear about her passing. I'm from East Orange, New Jersey, and started singing at New Hope Baptist Church, so she was like my fellow Jersey girl.

She was a great lady. We raised three boys, were together as long as she lived, and now she's passed on.

Lucy Mercedes Martinez, my mother, was probably my first mentor. She really tried to take care of me in spite of myself, and in spite of her own struggles with alcohol. She was an immigrant who had never finished school. But she was also a Renaissance woman who read voraciously. She spoke several languages.

She generally gave herself very good advice, (though she very seldom followed it).

My grandmother influenced me so deeply.

I was friends with Susan Sontag the last four years of her life. She had this amazing charisma and so much energy, but she had a sad little funeral in Montparnasse in Paris. It was rainy. It was all wrong. And I was thinking, 'God, she loved life so much.'

I always say the person who taught me how to sing indirectly because I listened to her all the time was Brandy. I fell in love with her voice when I was six years old. I always loved Brandy.

Joan was one of my biggest fans, as was Chrissie Hynde.