Artists are an odd bunch who draw inspiration for their works from literally anywhere. Sometimes it’s logical, there’s a muse, a life-altering incident, a piece of art so transcendent it shapes everything and everyone in the universe for a given amount of time, and sometimes it’s an episode of MTV’s Cribs so gaudy it rocks you to the core.
That’s what happened for Solange Knowles, who tapped Master P to narrate her forthcoming album A Seat At The Table. Yes, Solange revealed to Stereogum that P’s episode of Cribs with the gold flaked ceilings and fifty-leven security cameras was “one of the most gaudy, incredible displays of wealth that I had ever seen in my life” served as one of the many inspirations for her new LP. “This was a black man from New Orleans, and he got this by completely staying firm in his independence,” she said. “I would hear my dad talk about No Limit and how they never sold their company and how they started from the trunks, from nowhere, from nothing. It left a huge impression on me.”
Solange also said she saw a lot of her father in P, and vice versa, and originally commissioned him to do an interlude to a song “about independence” before the album was even completed. She was so moved by him and his story that she asked him to just narrate the entire album. “And so he ended up talking for like an hour and a half,” she revealed. “He just talked from the heart, talked about his story and his journey.”
Later Solange had the No Limit CEO come back, after he had a better understanding of the album and according to Solange “none of that actually made the album.” Instead, she just used the previous recordings and was amazed at “how well that connected with the songs that I’d already written.”
The random tidbit is just part of a lengthy and revealing interview in which Solange discusses her inspiration for the album including many artist and books as well as her father and New Iberia, La., the small town which she says her grandparents fled years ago due to the Ku Klux Klan. Check out the entire interview at Stereogum here. Solange released her album A Seat At The Table, featuring appearances from the likes of Lil Wayne, Kelly Rowland, Q-Tip last night at midnight. Stream it below.
