"Our success stories are always undersold. Even when we're lapping men, we're still called 'slept on' or 'underrated' as a means of keeing us below the industry sea level. For me, it was simultaneously being called the pit bull in a skirt and the underdog. My moves were drowning out those words, but they were still used to keep me down. I'm speaking both for myself and other women here, especially Black women. Telling me that I was going to fail wasn't protecting my fragile female heart from disappointment; it was perpetuating a cycle that I wanted to break. Did I do that? Many times. Sometimes I won; sometimes I lost. But eventually I realized that if the music industry wasn't going to let me be the first woman of their universe, then I had no choice. I had to leave and go build my own."--