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I was bred and raised in a multi-cultural music background.

I was raised in a lower-income family, and we were wild.

My family is part Creole, and we're Indian, and we're also very, very black. My father was so black, he was blue.

My Native American heritage was not embraced by our family, and we grew up African-American, so I didn't have a lot of access or history to that line of my family.

My mother's family came from the British West Indies. And my father's family came from, well, my father's father came from the Montana/South Dakota area. They were Blackfoot Indian.

My grandfather, Jesse Bowman, was of Abenaki Indian descent. He could barely read and write, but I remember him as one of the kindest people I ever knew. I followed him everywhere. He showed me how to walk quietly in the woods and how to fish.

Part of my ancestry is Cherokee. And in that tradition, you become an adult when you're 52.

I was born in New York and grew up on a ranch.