Solange Knowles quotes:

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  • It is always an honor to work with those that share your passion for music and just enjoy making great music.

  • Traveling is definitely something that your average 17-year-old doesn't get to do. One week we're in Japan, one week we're in Australia, one week we're back home going to football games.

  • I actually love my natural hair when it's in a twist out and it's been slept on for five days and revived by the steam of the shower.

  • I actually was a ballet dancer - I studied ballet from three until 13 - but like very seriously, that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a contemporary ballet dancer. I wanted to go to Juilliard.

  • We are getting an education of a lifetime. We're actually out there in the real world.

  • I have been writing songs since I was 9 years old, so writing has and always will be my first love and passion.

  • I really don't listen to anyone that I'm not proud of saying that I listen to. Even if it's something a little bit more unexpected, I didn't get too deep into the Waka, Gucci records, but I like those with pride.

  • He [ the son]'s grown up listening to all types of music, and the natural form of rebellion is to find the one genre that maybe he hasn't listened to and to make that his thing.

  • The Hadley Street Dream is a tribute to making a vision come to life. My father built a compound on a dessert city block, he saw something in that space we couldn't see. It was years later the album was born right there on Hadley St. He built the studio I started recording the album at.

  • I don't really have guilty pleasures. Anything musically that I fully, fully believe, is good no matter who the artist is, no matter what the marketing is behind it, I stand pretty firm.

  • Any decision I make is based on myself, and the only person I have to give an explanation to is God.

  • I think many people, especially from other cultures, just don't understand the role hair plays in Black women's lives.

  • You're just so excited that you have this record deal or this movie opportunity that you don't stand up for yourself and say, This is what I want to do.

  • [Beyoncé ] did a kickass job. You were the most patient, loving, wonderful sister ever. In the 30 years that we've been together, I think we've only really, like, butted heads ... we can count on one hand.

  • I've let go of being a super perfectionist on every single note and wanting the pitch to be absolutely perfect all of the time. I grew up watching the best of the best.

  • I have to learn how to say no a lot. Life is too short for anything else.

  • I love music. But I'm not gonna work myself to death. If there ever comes a point where I'm not enjoying it, then I'm not gonna do it anymore. I've promised myself that. I've written it down on paper and signed a contract.

  • I think the thing about what I want to achieve for the label is it to really be a home for artists who are already developed, who already have a great sense of their artistry or their imaging, who don't really feel or want that marketing push.

  • So over time, playing shows - after every show we would have pow-wow, I would have notes and we'd go over and we'd really restructure and re-do and now I feel really, really good about the show. But it's taken time.

  • You get educated by traveling.

  • I felt like when I took my weave out, I wasn't pretty, I wasn't noticeable.

  • A lot of times I use live musicians, but I don't want it to have that live funky sound so I'll just take the best loop of a drum part and repeat it over and over and over again so that there's consistency and it feels a little bit more programmed. But I have a love/hate relationship with comping as well.

  • As an artist, everybody has the opportunity to celebrate and speak their truth.

  • I actually produced other people's vocals for a long time when I first signed my publishing deal and I had just sort of decided that I only wanted to be a writer. I would be in all of these writing sessions, and a lot of times my publisher would say, "You should get a demo singer to sing it because then it doesn't identify as a Solange song."

  • I always have looked at "indie" as a term of "independence." Never associated a sonic gesture with that in the same way that pop music has always meant "popular" to me it didn't define a sound. And I think now that has been the context for things. If something is indie, it almost has this sonic association with it, or pop has become this term of shame almost, like, bubblegum sweet pop.

  • I have gone through many difference phases in my love affair with hip-hop.It evolves, your taste. It sometimes deepens, in terms of what's out; sometimes it's not as deep in terms of what's out. So it's definitely an evolution. I don't ever claim to be a hip-hop head.

  • I honestly try to have the approach that this is real life, this is the real world that we live in, and I don't really try to shelter [my son] from a lot of things that he's gonna see when he looks out of the window.

  • I just feel so much joy and gratitude that people have connected to it in this way. The biggest reward that I could ever get is seeing women, especially black women, talk about what this album ['A Seat at the Table'] has done, the solace it has given them.

  • I love when rappers have a off-beat, very abstract timing, and he certainly did.And any rapper who really approaches rapping with the art form of songwriting melodically - I know a bunch of rappers who actually go in before they write the lyrics and come up with the melody. And you can hear and feel that difference so much when that's the case.

  • I talk very slow. I move very slow. I definitely have that Southern drawl and although I never necessarily participated in the activities that go along with screw.I definitely was a huge fan of screw.Because melodically, I don't ever really sing very staccato or very fast. It's really about a groove; it's really about a vibe.

  • I think every generation has that movement of hip-hop that you know you're playing it and you definitely have that moment of like, "Why am I saying this so enthusiastically? Why am I so stoked and psyched to say these lyrics?"

  • I think there's just certain lyrics and certain forms of hip-hop that definitely rang true, again, to a lot of people's truth, but you don't necessarily want to hear someone using that as a just kind of a in-the-moment, fun, careless expression.

  • I'm a fan of hip-hop and I love it, I by no means am an expert on it.

  • I've also learned to only write songs and melodies that really work for my voice and that I won't have issues doing live. Because you can get really, really comfortable in the comping process: out of five takes, maybe one of those high notes that you struggled to do, nailed it, and then live you're having that challenge of really having to recreate that.

  • My parents only played Isley Brothers, Marvin Gaye. That's when New Kids came out, and we wanted to jam that. My mom was like, "Put that thing off and put my damn record on". So from old school to '90s to recent, it's just always been there.

  • The album ['A Seat at the Table'] really feels like storytelling for us all and our family and our lineage.

  • There were things that had been weighing heavy on me for quite some time. And I went into this hole, trying to work through some of these things so that I could be a better me and be a better mom to Julez and be a better wife and a better friend and a better sister.

  • There's a lot of situations where I feel irony involved when R&B and hip-hop is expressed in the indie worlds. There's a lot of times when I feel like the juxtaposition becomes a thing.

  • There's just so, so many overlooked R&B artists and I think it's really about, again, being sensitive to whatever you're addressing culturally. I just always try to have a sensitivity to it and what that might make someone feel.

  • What's important is that my family and I are all good,

  • When you're younger, you get shoved a lot. You don't really have a say-so.

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