Ahead of tonight’s all new RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 9 at 8/7C on VH1 – with special guests Lisa Kudrow and The B-52’s – RuPaul visited Salon’s studios for an exclusive talk about ‘Drag Race,’ on how he reinvents himself each season, and the importance of putting your best self forward.

Check it out:

“I remember being 14 years old thinking, making a pact with myself, I would never join into the matrix. I would never join in the status quo,” he said. “So I’ve always worked and done my art on the fringe, where I feel very comfortable. Getting into punk rock bands, and getting into drag — not because I wanted to be a woman, but because it is the ultimate act of treason in a male-dominated culture, to play with feminine things.

“I’ve always felt like the boy who fell to Earth.

“I came to understand that drag is about more than artistic expression and celebration. It is armor, too, reminding the wearer of the joy and privilege of being alive.

“The line that pulls a soul back from the murk, the speck of grace that arrives to give you life, can be completely unexpected. I’m a person with a deep connection to the medium of television but little affection for unscripted TV. There was no way to predict that watching drag queens cake concealer on their T-zones and slather glue stick over their eyebrows would lead me back to the world of the living.”

Listen to the full interview here.