She’s super busy touring (as an opening act on Lil Wayne’s I Am Still Music) with her sophomore album, No Boys Allowed, but that’s not keeping Keri Hilson from speaking her mind on her music and the industry. In an interview with TheBoomBox she reveals that music charts mean nothing to her, because she’s driven by an internal need to succeed: “I'm a very competitive person. I grew up playing sports and it's like a... self-drive. I'm very driven, and extraneous factors don’t affect how hard I work, really. Charts—none of that matters to me. All that matters is that I’m competing within myself to top the last song, top the last performance, whatever it is,” she said.
She also said that she doesn’t care at all if other musicians try to steal her style. In fact, she welcomes it: “Well, maybe there is going to be a new wave of artists that's inspired by me, that’s what I hope would happen,” she said. “So it would be nothing but flattery if I saw little Keri Hilson spawns one day, but it’s not gonna affect what I do, and what I’ve always heard in my own head. I’m just gonna do me regardless. It would be cool though.”
Hilson shared that she’s proud of Lil Wayne’s success and glad to be touring with him: “I [was] really excited to be on yet another tour with Lil Wayne. I was on his first ever headlining tour, I Am Music, and now it’s I Am Still Music and he is still music, he’s still very successful. I’m very proud of him,” she said.
In another life, Hilson might be an interior designer, but in this one, she laments that she has zero time to indulge her interests outside of music. “Besides music, I have a real passion for interior design. Probably because my father is a developer, I’ve always noticed my surroundings,” she said. “I’m thinking about having an agency for interior designers, because I could live vicariously through them. I don’t have time to do it myself.”
Read the rest of the revealing interview here.

(Photo: MANUEL NAUTA/Landov)