Solange sits down with big sister Beyonce for a candid interview in February’s Interview Magazine. Long seen as the little sister to the Queen, Solange is a talented artist in her own right. Last year’s release, A Seat at the Table, solidified Solange as her own woman capable of delivering on the biggest stage.
The interview is fantastic and you can sense the bond these two incredibly talented women have. Both have tremendous love and respect for their parents and believe in family. Like all of us, they’ve gone through ups and downs. But, while they share DNA, you come away from the interview appreciating, seeing and understanding Solange as her own woman.
One of the more interesting parts of the interview is Solange discussing the similarities between her and Beyonce’s father and Master P:
SOLANGE: Well, I find a lot of similarities in Master P and our dad.
BEYONCÉ: Me, too. [laughs]
SOLANGE: One of the things that was really, really deep for me in talking to Dad is his experience of having the community choose you [as one of the first students to integrate his Southern elementary and junior high school]—to do that, to go out and be the warrior and the face of that is just such an incredible amount of pressure. And to evolve from that and still have your sense of independence and still have your stride and your strength, and to dream big enough that you can create something from the ground up bigger than any community, neighborhood, or those four corners … I remember reading or hearing things about Master P that reminded me so much of Dad growing up. And they also have an incredible amount of love and respect for one another. And I wanted a voice throughout the record that represented empowerment and independence, the voice of someone who never gave in, even when it was easy to lose sight of everything that he built, someone invested in black people, invested in our community and our storytelling, in empowering his people. You and I were raised being told not to take the first thing that came our way, to build our own platforms, our own spaces, if they weren’t available to us. And I think that he is such a powerful example of that.
Whatever you might think of Master P, the founder and CEO of No Limit Records blazed a trail. He wanted to create opportunities and empower a community. There is certainly no back down in him, that’s the only way you can rise to the top and create something in the face of adversity.
Matthew Knowles embodies much of that same drive, spirit and determination. He has passed it down to his daughters and they are blazing their own trails. Solange makes music her own way, in her own space. She is empowered.