Solange knows her fans are eager to hear new music from her, but she’s still marching to the beat of her own drum—or in this case, tuba.

In an interview for Harper’s Bazaar’s March 2024 cover story, the superstar opens up about finding her latest musical obsession in the brass instrument.

“I love it,” she says. “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 bitch hasn’t made an album.’”

The last time the artist released a musical project, it was in 2019’s When I Get Home, her fourth studio album, which featured contributions from Pharrell Williams, Steve Lacy, Dev Hynes, Playboi Carti, and Tyler, the Creator.

Explaining her love for the tuba, Solange says, “It sounds like what the gut feels like to me.…There’s a way that it takes up space that you can’t deny, and it also just feels very Black to me.”

Larissa Hofmann

On working with her on When I Get Home, Tyler, the Creator tells Bazaar, “It’s such a pure feeling that she’s really tapped into.…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 fucking undercover cop. 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.”

Solange also reflected on the album that preceded When I Get Home, 2016’s A Seat at the Table, widely considered her artistic breakthrough.

As she explains, “A Seat at the Table, and the work that went into it, was all about origin: finding the way that history was generationally repeating itself or evolving and all of the ways that I found those stories within me.”

As an associate editor at HarpersBAZAAR.com, Chelsey keeps a finger on the pulse on all things celeb news. She also writes on social movements, connecting with activists leading the fight on workers' rights, climate justice, and more. Offline, she’s probably spending too much time on TikTok, rewatching Emma (the 2020 version, of course), or buying yet another corset. 

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