The first time that I probably realized, 'OK, this is not a stereotypical black girl moment,' I was in the fourth grade... I went to a record store and bought all these Alanis Morissette and Fiona Apple records," recalls Solange Knowles with a laugh. "I remember coming home and blasting them in my room, and my mother being like, 'That's devil worship music!'"

Knowles is tucked sweetly, if sickly, into the corner of a banquette in the restaurant of a W Hotel in Manhattan, nursing a mean cold or flu -- "I don't even want to tell you what I think I have, because you'll be like, 'Let me sit back'" -- but every bit the professional, she has shown up for the fight, ready to answer whatever questions I might have in an effort to further promote her new record, SoL-AngeL & the Hadley St. Dreams, with the aim of not merely getting people to buy it, but to understand it... and to understand her.

Sipping chamomile tea, wearing a white Armani sweater draped over her impossibly small shoulders, Armani velour jeans and shiny white patent leather jazz shoes, she looks something like a beautiful, frail bird whose wings have been flapping much too fast of late. Far from the vibrant soul-queen persona she affects in videos and public appearances (and the accompanying pictures here), today Solange is decidedly subdued and the lips are un-glossed -- not for nothing, neither. In the past two weeks, she's jetted from Paris to New York to Bermuda and back to New York, performing, doing photo shoots and press, filming a video, and being a mom to her 4-year-old son, Julez. "The problem is that I haven't had just one night or day to really just rest," she says, the need for rest practically pulsating from her body. Knowles insists, though, that after this interview, and another performance the next day, she's going to take a break. When I ask her why she works herself so hard, she explains, "I come from a family of workaholics. Both of my parents have hustler spirits. So whenever you grow up in that kind of household, you know, it's just a hustler spirit -- work, work, work. It's hard to know anything else." .... For the Full Article Click Here.