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On her current tour: "This tour is definitely, totally, totally different than any tour I've ever done -- ever. I never want to do the same thing, and I never want to do what is comfortable. I wanted to really, really show people my versatility, and I wanted to do something that was almost like a story. So the approach of this tour is more almost like a journey that you take from the beginning to the end; from the beginning of my life, leading up to where we are now."

On her acting career: "I'm very serious about it, actually. I'm so serious that I don't want to just do anything. Would there ever be a point where I would put a role in front of a tour? I don't really look at it like that, doing one over the other. ... If something feels right and it's calling me and it's something important to me for whatever reason, I would do it."

On pressures in her too-busy life: "I try my best to really do everything I do from a very pure place. When I do music, I love it. When I'm doing any film I've chosen, it's because I love it. When I'm doing my annual Black Ball for Keeping a Child Alive, it's because I love it. Do I get overwhelmed? Absolutely. Everybody gets overwhelmed. Are there days when I'm mad or think I surely should have said no to one of these things because it's a bit too much? Yes. But I try my best to really make choices for the things I truly love."

On her racially mixed background: "Actually I'm not Latina, even though I would love to be and many people do think I am. A lot of people believe I'm part Jamaican, though I'm not. I'm definitely black and Italian and a little Irish or Scottish. Being of mixed background influences everything in my life and music. I've always been able to relate to a variety of different places and styles. It opened me up to not be judgmental, from the classical music I studied to Tupac [Shakur] and Biggie [Smalls] to Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin."

JON BREAM

See the full transcript of this interview at startribune.com/music.