CityLife

Solange has nothing to apologise for

FEISTY: Solange

On YouTube, there’s a hilarious clip of Solange Knowles on a US breakfast TV show where she berates an effervescent interviewer for something that was said off air, when she thought it was live.

There are myriad strategies in dealing with a PR car-crash such as this. Perhaps one of the least-recommended was Knowles’ elected response on her MySpace blog.

Under the misleadingly contrite heading ‘I Do Have An Apology To Make’, the 22-year-old writes: ‘It is not my job to make u like me. It is not my job to rub your back, kiss your backside or keep my mouth shut. It is not my job to sell you on my "personality" or "like-ability". It is my job to share with you my music and my music alone.’

Well, at least she’s said she’s sorry, eh?

“Nowadays there’s so much pressure placed on your likeability rather than your art,” she affirms to CityLife. “You have to do interviews and talk to the media: there’s always this pressure to be ‘relatable’ and ‘likeable’” – she spits the words disdainfully out like cherry-stones – “and half of the time, I feel that for some people, that sells more records than their music. I don’t think that’s the way it should be.”

Multiple times

Rescheduled multiple times, when we finally secure an interview with Solange, we’re informed it’s to last 10 minutes.

This is unusual for an artist poised to perform at minnow venue the Ruby Lounge (forthcoming attractions include tribute bands Noasis and Guns 2 Roses), but then in her native US, Solange is a big deal and famously, the younger sibling of  bootylicious Beyoncé, a topic we’re informed by her label to avoid.

Bringing a packet of peanuts to feed the elephant in the room, when we catch up with her in Paris, she’s in high spirits. “I am about to be reunited with the love of my life in the city of love,” she coos.

How romantic. “Yes, he’s my four-year-old son and he flew in today and I’m really excited. This week, he was with his father in Houston, so now I’m looking forward to having him as my little roadie.”

God Given Name

On her new album, Sol-Angel And The Hadley St Dreams, she acknowledges on the opening track (God Given Name) that yes, she has a pop royalty sister, and no, she doesn’t like comparisons.

Yet her second long-player, the long-awaited follow-up to 2003’s Solo Star, should establish her as a star in her own right. The ace faux-Motown of lead single, I Decided, is an indicator of what to expect.

Embellished by production from Mark Ronson and Pharell, Solange sought to make the kind of record that the likes of The Supremes would have if they were around in 2008.

“Growing up as child, my mother played me a lot of ‘60s and '70s music. I didn’t appreciate it at the time,” she laughs.

“All my friends listened to New Kids On The Block, while my parents played Marvin Gaye and Earth, Wind And Fire. As I got older and moved to Idaho, I got bored with the provocative nature of modern music, so I started picking up those old records.”

Rebelled

Like most teenagers, Solange rebelled against her elders’ musical tastes. “By the time I was in the forth grade, I started listening to a lot of Fiona Apple and Alanis Morissette. Which my parents thought was some kind of foreign devil music,” she chuckles.

“It’s interesting because it’s all gone full-circle. I play The Beatles and Stevie Wonder and all these great musicians to my son and all he wants to do is listen to hip-hop.”

Despite hailing from a musical dynasty, Solange says that her father, record label executive and former Destiny’s Child manager Matthew Knowles and mother, Tina, originally attempted to coerce her to go into law. “They encouraged me to have some 9-to-5 career,” she remembers.

“I was always very good at arguing my point, so they always hoped that I would be a lawyer.”

Blurb

Her self-penned press blurb makes exhausting reading: like an arts-based Swiss Army Knife, she’s tried her hand at dancing (she’s classically trained in ballet, jazz, tap and modern), acting (most recently in Bring It On: All Or Nothing “which had the biggest first week of sales in the history of straight-to-DVD releases”), songwriting, modelling, and aged merely 16, she released Solo Star, an experience she found depressingly dispiriting.

“I wanted to make an album that was really inspired by reggae. When I went to the label, they had a completely different vision for me. They wanted one pop song, one R&B song, one jazz, one country song.

"So it ended up having no identity. I was totally turned off by the music industry and ended up getting married and having my son and moving to the country.”

Divorced

Pregnant at 17, married soon after, and divorced not long after that, it’s fair to say Solange has crammed in a lot of living. What’s interesting is her desire to return to a time when music was “less provocative”, which verges on the puritanical.

“It’s important as a female artist that your music is not distracted by your imaging,” she elaborates.

“It’s weird because I love and respect Madonna and her artistry over the years, but I don’t think I could ever be in the place to wear some of things she’s worn.

"I wouldn’t feel comfortable with it. It would seem to me to be prostituting yourself to sell more records. Even at the end of the I Decided video, I only kiss a guy. But I literally had to make everybody clear out of the room to do it.”

Amid the T&A-infested photoshoots of R&B, Solange admits she’s something of a square peg. “It’s a type of music that is affiliated with sexy imaging. You’re always placed in a position by a stylist or director to play up to it. But fortunately, mother is my stylist so that is hardly ever an issue. And luckily, my father is my manager so I’m not in that position.”
 
Truculent

You wonder whether Solange’s truculent MySpace response and unwillingness to do anything that she views as remotely compromising her artistic vision comes from having been raised in a house where Beyonce was working on Destiny’s Child from around the age of nine, then experiencing the pitfalls of puppet-pop on Solo Star, before being slapped by reality in the form of teenage pregnancy and later divorce.

Finding genuine fulfilment thanks to a son, Daniel, maybe she simply can’t be bothered with the smoke and mirrors the industry requires.

“Of course, the family association is about 50 percent of the problem,” she considers after some thought. “And then there’s the curiosity about – especially in Europe more than America – having a baby so young and being a divorced mom. This is the first interview where you don’t sound shocked by that. But I definitely think....”

Suddenly she gasps before unleashing a scream that makes her sound as if she’s being eviscerated by a George A Romero zombie.

“AGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.”

A pause.

“Okay, I’m so sorry but this interview has to be cut short because I’ve just seen myself for the first time in a week.”

With that, she hangs up. Without even time to say 'Solange, farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, goodbye'.

Solange plays The Ruby Lounge on Friday, November 14. You can win tickets to see her above.