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.

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.

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.

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.

As an artist, everybody has the opportunity to celebrate and speak their truth.

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 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."