Solange Covers Lucky Magazine: Talks The Elevator Fight & Move To New Orleans

That elevator fight with Jay Z definitely didn’t put a damper in Solange’s magazine reign.  She has snagged yet another cover — this time for Lucky Magazine.

Inside the August 2014 issue, Solo is doing what she does best, as she models an array of summer looks.  She also addresses the incident with Jay, which she refers to as “the thing,” while also dishing on her time as a background dancer for Destiny’s Child, her decision to start writing music, and why she feels at peace living in New Orleans.

Catch a few highlights:

On the elevator fight
“What’s important is that my family and I are all good. What we had to say collectively was in the statement that we put out, and we all feel at peace with that.[...]We’ve always held each other down no matter what. That’s something I’m drilling into Julez now.”

On touring with Destiny’s Child
“I had no idea how to dance hip-hop at the time,” she says. “I was trained in classical ballet! But it sounded chill and I was going to make a little weekly check and be with my whole family, so I said okay. I loved traveling. We were in Europe for a month, and that’s when my musical eyes opened up. There, Björk was on pop radio. She wasn’t some obscure underground thing like she was in America.” Knowles spent the next two years as part of the Destiny’s Child machine until an injury forced her to take a year off from dancing. “Dance had been my everything since I was a little girl and all of a sudden I couldn’t do it,” she says, her voice going quieter. “Some beautiful things came out of that year but also some painful things. I started writing songs because I had all of these emotions that were so real.”

She shared her music with Kelly Rowland first but was nervous to tell her parents
“Kelly’s like a sister. When I let her hear my music, she said, ‘I want you to write for my album.’ That gave me a lot of confidence.” Telling Mathew and Tina was a little harder. “I was nervous to talk to my parents. Part of my mom was like, ‘Please be normal and get a regular job,’ because she had gone through so much with my sister. She knew how strong-willed I was and how the industry was probably not going to be the most supportive thing for a 15-year-old girl.”

“I was serious about my songwriting but not necessarily too gung ho on all the other elements of being an artist—the public nature of things, the lack of privacy, the feeling of always needing to be on. I also felt really misunderstood by my peers and the musical landscape that I was in.”

On why she decided to move to New Orleans
“I lived in New York and L.A. and they were different worlds I learned to navigate. Fashion and music have so many elements I’m connected to, but they also have parts that I’m not so interested in. I can step in and step out of those worlds. Being in New Orleans gives me space.”

“I have friends who call in the middle of the day and say, ‘Come around the corner for a drink—we’re going to hear this band,’ and I’m just like ‘No, I can’t! … Okay, wait for me.’ So I have to remove myself. As an artist, I lack discipline in terms of buckling down. But if I’m isolated then I have no choice.”

On how she keeps it together
“I think about all of those phases that I went through,” she continues, looking out over kids playing in the park, “and the ridicule and whatever that I experienced. And I can’t think of one time where I ever felt like I was going to break. That’s because I had confidence instilled in me by my parents. They didn’t always like it—in fact, most of the time they didn’t—but they never asked me to change.”