Solange Does Rare Interview On 'A Seat At The Table'

Solange hasn’t done many interviews since releasing her Grammy-nominated album, “A Seat at the Table”. But an interview with WQXR host, Helga Davis, recently hit the web and shed a lot of light on her inspiration for her hit album.

In the hour-long conversation, the ladies talk about Solange’s fourth-studio album, powerful visuals, teenage love and thoughts on critics.

“Working out how to develop those tools through my art and through the conversation of my music to where now I actually feel much better, much more equipped to have those conversations,” Solange says about the powerful statements on safe spaces, racism and appropriation of culture on her album.

Adding, “I actually had to go through the rage and the frustration and the mourning and the protest and the meditation through the album to get to the other side, to be able to have those conversations, no matter where I’m being targeted. I can stand firm in that and strong and with my shoulders and my head high.”

She also talks about how she was offended by white New York Times writer, Jon Caramanica, who essentially said her white audience had ownership over [her], sometime after the release of “True.” 

“I began to think a lot about that conversation and replaying it, and it haunted me,” she said. “And it haunted my mother to hear someone telling her daughter ‘don’t bite the hand that feeds you.’ And also the racial subtleties—[that] are not so subtle—of what that encompasses when you say that to a black woman. Then you connect it by saying ‘Do you know who’s buying your records?’ So I was essentially being told to shut up.”

Listen to the complete interview below— it’s awesome.

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