Being a kid is the best. I talked to myself a lot, made up my own language and sang songs using that language.
Walking through a market or hawker center and smelling every culture of food from otak-otak and satay to curry and of course chicken rice, is one of my fondest memories of Singapore.
I learned to be an entrepreneur in Primary Two. I went to Methodist Girls’ School (MGS) and we used to have to wear an MGS pin on the uniform or we’d get into trouble with the monitors. I‘d buy the stickers that looked just like the MGS pin from the tuckshop for 10 cents and would sell them at 20 cents a pop to girls that lost or forgot their pin.
I’m really a Singapore girl, but with an international outlook. I feel that no matter where I go, I’ll always be Singaporean at heart.
The cover of my first album Mississauga was inspired by the mascot of Singapore, the Merlion.
The world wasn’t ready for an Asian female rapper and Hollywood didn’t know what to do with me. At first, they wanted to promote me as some sexy, exotic girl but I didn’t want that so it pushed me to be more independent.
I feel like as a Singaporean, I know what it means to be small yet self-sufficient and that’s the approach I adopt while making music.
People used to think I was one of Snoop Dogg’s music video hoes trying to get her big break. There was a lot of sexism going on and nobody actually thought there was more to me than just a pretty face.
I started tweaking my voice to sound like a man in the songs I’d written just so that the big names would take my songwriting seriously.
I lived my first eight years in Singapore and come from a typical Singaporean family. It was the competitive “must be No. 1” attitude of Singaporeans that drove me and kept me striving for more.
Living in Canada definitely exposed me to a great variety of influences and gave me a wider perspective on things but at the end of the day, I still believe I wouldn’t have been so motivated and as successful if I wasn’t a Singaporean.
When I first started out, I worked with many underground artists and producers from many genres like dubstep and even reggae. It was a wholesome experience and very inspiring.
It can be discouraging at first to work with people better than you and with so much more experience, but it challenged me to up my game and try to match their standards.
Teaching in ghettos and being so close to poverty while in Jamaica really woke me up to the rest of the world and its problems. It made me realize how lucky I was to have been born into a country that values and places emphasis on proper education.
The moral of The Emperor’s New Clothes might be that vanity blinds us, not all that glitters is gold or that an excellent sales pitch will get you everywhere. However you look at it, it’s a good story.
The Lion City girl is coming home.
