On the album...

“It’s a mixture of urban and Latin styles. Although there are artists who have fused pop and Latin music together and there have been Latin rappers, I’ve had the idea of putting R&B and hip-hop and Latin sounds together for a while.”

“It took sweat, tears...and a lot of migraines! But I really feel like I fulfilled my vision and accomplished what I set out to do with this record.”

“Some people said that mixing Latin music and hip-hop couldn't be done, so with courage in both hands, I had to start off being the first female artist to bring cumbia and vallenato music to the pop world. ‘Hold Me Down’ is my way of asking people to embrace me and my music. As for ‘To Fit In,’ well, I come from a racially mixed family – my father is from Colombia and my mother is American. I grew up speaking English so when I was around family members who spoke Spanish, I questioned where I fit.”

“I realized I was doing something different. So I just began making a list of producers and songwriters I wanted to work with. There weren’t any producers or artists I could name who had created this style of music so I had to put producers together [Latin vs. urban].”

“I really believe that the public is always in search of something new and I’m giving people something they haven’t heard before. I know I’m taking a risk by mixing two different genres of music, but I love both styles, Latin and hip-hop...and I have to be true to myself. There’s no way I can do one without the other.”

Other quotes...

“I was five when I got my first microphone. It was orange-colored and it was called ‘Mr. Microphone’! All I wanted to do was sing.”

"[Baltimore’s High School for the Performing Arts] was a ‘Fame’ type of school and you had to have a good grade average,” she says. “I studied harmony, ear and voice training.”

“While I was going to college, I started to tune in more to Latin music. My whole family would go to Colombia and Miami in the summer so I absorbed a lot of the music there—the cumbia and vallenato styles lived in my head. I was also trying to find my own sound and to start out, it was a mix of the blues of Aretha, and the scatting of Celia Cruz; I was like a chameleon transforming and absorbing all the sounds.”

“I went to this industry dinner and met an A&R representative from Virgin Records, and a week later, we were talking about my idea of incorporating Latin rhythms with R&B and hip-hop.”

“There’s so much more to come...I’ve only just begun!”