Jillian Hervey Quotes

I think having wild, huge hair, is me being my own version of a lioness.

I remember just looking at this lioness, she was staring at me, and we just had this weird connection.

I've always loved vintage and I never like to have something someone else has.

The women in my family are just strong women who do their own thing, so I knew I needed to have individuals like that.

You need to have honest things in the world. Even if people don't understand it, if it's coming from you, that's already important.

My main goal was to not tell my mom anything or anyone anything. Even within our family, we like to do it ourselves, we like to be our own boss, and we don't like asking for help.

For the name Lion Babe, we are a little avant-garde, a little left. And with bands like Blondie, Pink Floyd, or Jamiroquai, you don't know they're bands, you just kind of hear the name and you're like 'What is it?' so that was the kind of thing we wanted to do.

I find that the quest to be perfect and make perfect music is like a black whole. I realize that you can come with the intention to capture a vibe and use a formula, but you have to accept that most of the time its not going to be what you envisioned and you might manifest something better. I think that's been the hardest thing to wrap my head around that most ideas we go for ends up sounding different. I think art in general should be about enjoying the process and the experience. All that matters is if you feel the music and it captures the element your going for.

I love to feel that I'm not above anyone.

This world is going in all sorts of directions, but I think all you can do is get people to think about things in a different way, because sometimes people aren't even thinking.

You're just always growing. I feel like it's been very fast growth, but super exciting and I know I'll look back and feel like 'Yes, things were stressful, but it was also such an exciting time.'

I was curious because I hadn't really known anyone to do just that, so I would stop in on his sessions with his rapper friends, and then one day, I told Astro Raw "I'm looking to sing. He told me to try it out and then we made 'Treat Me Like Fire' and everything started."

As I got older, I started to do it more and more, and I wanted to learn all of the different types. I grew up doing modern, so I wanted to learn ballet, tap, jazz, and African - just everything.

Sometimes words come easily and sometimes they don't. Most songs take me twenty minutes to write.

In New York everyone just kind of knows each other.

Transformation comes in a lot of different forms, but going natural really helped me love myself.

I've always been an animal lover my entire life.

Basically, my senior year of high school, I was going to look at prospective colleges and I went to visit Northeastern University because one of my friends was going.

The freedom I experienced as a dance major in college gave me so much, but the reality of being in school is that you are still forced to work under restrictions.

I was shaped in college into a performance artist. I never really thought of myself as being one singular thing. I think of myself as an artist and I feel no restrictions when it comes to how I want to portray what I want to portray.

People just try to put you in a box and I don't see myself in any particular box. I'm making my own box. There's no way I would be able to make the music I'm making without dancing.

It's so important to embrace what you have because if you don't, that can be the root of very self-destructive habits, which I think people waste a lot of energy on.

Of course, I'm a dancer. Dancing grabbed me from the start and I have was never afraid to do it. With out dance I wouldn't be singing. I want to expose people to the underground dance scene through music.

I tend to write about love because I'm always thinking about it. I think a lot though and struggle with overanalyzing. Way over. That's the thing, I feel like I do that a lot and then finally when I stop thinking, that's when it happens.

That experience of being in the wild in a place where life initially began for all creatures gave me a overwhelming sense of connection.

I prefer to do things by myself, but I always bring in people who inspire me.

I would feel weird having someone style me. It would have to be a collaboration. I've had those experiences and every time it happens I don't feel good. What's the point of putting all this work into something and then when you present it, it's not you?

[New York] gives you room to be weird; you can be yourself and you can wear whatever you want. No one is really going to judge you because everyone is doing their own thing.

I'm totally into the emotional aspect of things.

Between my mom and dad, I would hear a lot of Earth, Wind, and Fire. My mom loved Chaka Khan, so that was on in the car a lot.

I grew up as a dancer, and music and dance are so closely tied, that in ballet class you're listening to all this classical music, and in modern class you're working with a live drummer. It was something that always made me feel really comfortable and I've had a connection to since the beginning.

Both of my mom's parents were music teachers, so I was hearing the fundamentals of playing the piano, what notes are, and all those things very early on.

I've always been kind of surrounded by music my whole life, so my earliest memories of it were just hearing it in the house.

I was working on a piece for one of the things I was dancing to and I needed to have original music. I didn't know where to begin, I'm so bad at computers, and I remembered that he actually made music. I asked Astro Raw if he'd be interested in scoring and he said yes.

Being vulnerable and strong is a complicated thing, but that's who we are.

I think my life dramatically shifted when I met Lucas [Goodman] and it wasn't even planned. I had a very clear vision of what I was going to do.

I grew up always wanting to be a dancer and when I went to New York, I fell in love with the idea of performing in all ways.

I quit piano and violin because it felt too rigid. It was just my thing, something I fell in love with from a very early age.

[Dancing] was just a nice way of expressing myself, listening to music, and being able to move around and be free, but also really learning something. It was just a nice balance of training and expressing yourself at the same time.

[My mom] put me in dance class when I was really young just as a thing to do and I loved it. I remember being excited every time I went, no matter how tired I was - it was the one thing that I always liked doing.

This is what I love to do. I love to perform for people that get it or just want something interesting.

To be on stage, to be sharing a stage with Lauryn Hill, Grace Jones, SZA, Kelis, and all these incredible women, I'm like 'When did this happen?'

We had spent a lot of time in London [with Lucas Goodman], which has been amazing, but also it was kind of a homecoming and we felt so surrounded by a specific community of people who are just so New York, so unapologetically themselves and so creative.

There's been so many, I think [Lucas Goodman and I] share this, but for us, Afropunk was a really big moment just because it was in New York.

More than anything, it's been a transition into embracing my destiny. I have everything around me to be able to do this properly. Whether or not I was hiding from that early on, I think now it's great to feel that way. It's just the journey.

I'm always looking for people to feel connected to me and inspired in their own right.

I saw myself traveling with a company or making my own work and being a little weird. I wasn't thinking about the business side of anything, I just knew that I loved dancing.

Being in New York, and meeting really amazing, talented, eccentric, and bold people, and just feeling really excited about life, got me really revved up and I just felt like everything was at my fingertips - that I could try anything. I really felt invincible. It was such a shift.

I had been with a guy for seven years and I was done with that. I wanted to reinvent my whole life and change my hair - I'd had brown, straight extensions forever - and I just wanted to get rid of that, to shed skin, and really just be independent.

Back then, it's weird, because I wasn't consciously thinking about it and I think that's why the doors opened and I had the opportunity. It was a big shift and I realized that you can plan and think your life is going somewhere, but you also have to surrender to what opportunities present themselves and really go for those as well.