With only three more days until we find out if Solange will take home her very first Grammy Award, she’s revisiting with ELLE her reasoning for creating the album for which she was nominated.

In her soon-to-be-released cover story with the magazine, Solo explained that she intentionally sung A Seat at the Table in a tone that didn’t reflect its subject matter.

“I did want to create this juxtaposition, politically, of having these very hard, messy conversations but having them stylistically in a way that you can really hear me and not the yelling, the rage. I wanted to project in my delivery what I was not achieving at all: peace and having a certain lightness and airiness that could maybe help me get closer to having more light and airiness in my life.”

Solange

The singer, who had her son Daniel Julez at the age of 18, also discussed briefly raising him in Idaho where his father (and her then-husband) was still enrolled in college.

“It was one of the most bittersweet moments of my life because I was so in love with Julez and, having spent a lot of time on the road, I yearned to be in one place to have the opportunity to really ground myself with him. But it was isolating and lonely, and so cold and dark. And it was just Julez and me most of the time. It was hard to imagine being able to progress in my career in any way.”

Solange

Solange also revealed what it was like growing up with both Beyoncé and Kelly Rowland in the same household.

“[They] were the same age, which is like a built-in best friend in the house; they were extremely close. Writing felt like this insular thing that I could go back in my room and express all that I would observe, all the emotions that would arise. It felt like mine, my little thing.”