Solange Teases a Creative Pivot for Her New Music: ‘I Can Only Imagine the Eye Rolls From People’
Solange Knowles hasn’t released an album since 2019’s When I Get Home, but her next creative body of work might take her fans by surprise.
Knowles graces the latest cover of Harper’s Bazaar, and in the cover story published Tuesday (Feb. 20), she opened up about her fascination with the tuba and how she’s been writing music for the brass instrument.
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“I love it. I’ve started writing music for the tuba, and I am trying to talk myself into releasing it, but I can only imagine the eye rolls from people being like, this b—h hasn’t made an album,” she said.
Solange explained that the tuba’s raspiness connects with her soul. “It sounds like what the gut feels like to me,” she described. “There’s a way that it takes up space that you can’t deny, and it also just feels very Black to me.”
The “Almeda” singer has been apprehensive about releasing her tuba tones, as she doesn’t know how fans will react to the creative pivot, but she’s not closing the door on the opportunity.
Solange’s last album, When I Get Home, arrived in March 2019 and saw contributions from an array of collaborators including Gucci Mane, Playboi Carti, Metro Boomin and Tyler, the Creator.
The project debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 with 43,000 album units sold in the first week and ended up being ranked at No. 27 on our Best 50 Albums of 2019 list.
Tyler described the organic process of collaborating with Solange on the Gucci Mane-assisted “My Skin My Logo,” on which the Grammy-winning rapper is a producer.
“It’s such a pure feeling that she’s really tapped into,” he told Harper’s Bazaar. “I think that’s why I liked her, because [her art] wasn’t based on chasing any zeitgeist, whether it was something political or like, yeah, I’m down like a f–king undercover cop.”
Tyler continued: “She’s not an undercover cop. She’s just her, and she makes whatever she wants. I feel like 80 percent of artists with these opportunities to put something out don’t do that because they’re chasing numbers. She got daughters … like, it’s a lot of them out there that’s not citing her.”
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