Top 149 Quotes & Sayings by Solange Knowles - Page 3

[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'm really excited that the fashion industry is evolving, doing a much better job at representation, with women of color, women of different shapes, sizes, and creeds. It's been a long time coming... There were issues of tokenism, issues of misrepresentation. I'm optimistic that I see the change, the conversation that these archetypes gotta go. We can be very political and have long weaves down to our asses.

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.

Our mother always taught us to be in control of our voice and our bodies and our work, and she showed us that through her example. If she conjured up an idea, there was not one element of that idea that she was not going to have her hand in. She was not going to hand that over to someone. And I think it's been an interesting thing to navigate, especially watching you do the same in all aspects of your work: Society labels that a control freak, an obsessive woman, or someone who has an inability to trust her team or to empower other people to do the work, which is completely untrue.

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 remember Björk saying that she felt like, no matter what stage in her career, if a man is credited on something that she's done, he's going to get the credit for it. And, unfortunately, that still rings true.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

I remember being really young and having this voice inside that told me to trust my gut. And my gut has been really, really strong in my life. It's pretty vocal and it leads me.

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.

I'm probably on the internet way more than I should be. I don't know. I love connecting people. I love introducing people to other people who are doing incredible work in the world. And I'm just on the internet too damn much.

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.

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 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 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.

So much of your identity in junior high is built on who you're with. You see the world through the lens of how you identify and have been identified at that time.

One of the things I'm most proud of about myself is my ability to fail in front of the world. You have to have that attitude when you want to experiment in art, in music, in writing, or in fashion.

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.

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.

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.

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 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?"

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

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.

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.