What was the best part of the "Road to Stardom" experience?
Working with and meeting Missy Elliot, and the opportunity of meeting (judges) Mona Scott and Dallas Austin and a legend like Teena Marie. The people that we met along the journey were incredible.
Did your opinion of Missy change after doing the show?
No, because I think I was mature enough to see that it was a TV show and when you are an artist at Missy’s level you have to do things, for lack of a better word, for political reasons or for TV’s sake. We have an image to uphold. It would seem a little hypocritical that someone who has a song like "Work It" and "Pussycat" could be offended by anything I could possible say. I understand that when you have the whole country watching this you want to do the right thing. You don’t want to condone someone like
disrespecting women or using vulgar language. It didn’t really change my opinion of Missy. I still respect her very much.
So, I guess you'd say it’s ridiculous how the judges reacted to your lyrics when you battled Nilyne.
I think it’s pretty ridiculous -- the fact that they pulled me aside and gave me this speech about taking it to a personal level. You never saw anyone take Frank B. aside when he personally attacked my character. Again, that’s a little bit hypocritical. In the context of where I was coming from, it was a battle. They put us in a ring and that’s what a battle is about...Frank B came out of left field on me and was wilding out. I think it was a little bit of poor judgment but it is what it is.
Speaking of Frank ...when he was attacking you in his rap, he compared you to Nelly and that’s what seemed to set you off more than anything else. Why is that?
It wasn’t any line in particular that made me upset. Everybody is going to blame everything on editing and I don’t want to do that the whole time. But when things are edited a certain way, it appears that that’s how things happen. That didn’t make me lose it. I don’t think anything he said made me lose it. I think what made me the most angry was that he came into that already prepared for the battle. He came into our group (after almost being eliminated) with something to prove and he had written a rhyme. If he had given me a fair opportunity to write something about him, it would have been better. I wasn’t intimidated by him. I just don’t think it was fair. He came out of left field with something prepared and I didn’t have anything prepared.
When people make comparisons like the LL comparison and the Nelly comparison...Usher, whatever, I am so not insulted by those comparisons. They are people who are selling millions of records so it doesn’t offend me at all.
