Solange Knowles is still coasting on the success of her 2016 release of A Seat At The Table. Her 21-track project awarded her Harvard's prestigious Artist of the Year Award and she tells Billboard Magazine that she's "still working through feeling deserving of it."
“I didn’t come from a line of college-educated women. I feel so humbled and appreciative, [having been] an 18-year-old teenage mother who didn’t go to college, who always had to explore academia on her own," she adds.
The 31-year-old is the magazine's March cover star where she further explains music that excites her today. “Tierra Whack. She sent me a shirt that says, ‘Tierra Whack is my mom,’ and I wear it proudly," she tells the publication. "I love Cardi B. I can’t wait to hear what her album sounds like. Moses [Sumney] and Kelela put out incredible projects last year. Azealia Banks is putting out new music. I think she’s phenomenal. I saw Missy [Elliott] and Busta [Rhymes] and Kelly [Rowland] are putting out a record [‘Get It’] today, which I’m going home to listen to. Missy is… well, she’s my mom.”
Solange says she's been working with "Laurel Canyon, Topanga Canyon and Jamaica."
"The house that I was just recording in [in] Jamaica, I stayed there for four days," she says. "And then the last day, the owner was like, “You know that mural that’s downstairs in the spare bedroom that the engineer booth is in? Joni Mitchell painted that.”
As for new music coming soon, Solange touches on the cycle of the music industry where artists are expected to put out an album, perform it and then automatically go back and put out another one.
"Artists are really whimsical. And I have a 13-year-old son now, so that is a compass of how I have to set up my life and set up my work," she says. "It matters to be present with him. I’m relieved when I hear other mothers say, “Yeah, we’re going through this, too.”
Read her full interview here.