I Met Solange?!

Originally published on www.kesifelton.com

January 20, 2017

So if anyone read my last post “Solange, Beyoncé, and Creating Your Brand as a Black Woman,” it was definitely one of my favorites to write so far. Anyways, today I was in a lowkey, stay-in-bed-and-do-work-all-day type of mood, but I randomly saw on Twitter that Solange was going to be at a Black-owned bookstore about 10 minutes from my campus *insert eye emoji*. At first, I was planning on staying in my bed where I was but I thought "Hey, I might see Solange Knowles so why not?"

The gag was, I saw the tweet about 10 minutes before she was "supposed" to come so I almost ignored it but, again, Solange Knowles. So I ordered an Uber and made my way to Sankofa.

Fast forward to when she showed up. She of course looked perfect and talked to us about the importance of investing in our own community, which was why she worked with the store to buy about 250 books for us and gave them out on a first-come-first-serve basis. The owner of the bookstore came up and reiterated Solange's sentiments, saying that it was important that we remain cognizant of where we spend our money. Solange then got back on the mic and said she originally wanted to visit Howard while she was in town (why else), but because of some random event that was going on in D.C., we were closed so she wasn't able to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

She opened the line to meet people for some fellowship and I was thinking of what I wanted to say to her. I thought about mentioning the blog post or Interview Magazine spread but honestly when it was my turn we just hugged and exchanged "Hi! How are you?" and "I'm good!" Then she asked for my name and said "Hi Kési it's nice to meet you!" And then I just said thank you again, took my picture, and left. Super uneventful but the fact that I was able to meet someone whose album truly resonated with me and my own journey with self-healing was amazing and is something that I'll remember forever. I love how she took the time and money to buy books for us (I got The Meaning of Michelle by Veronica Chambers which I'm pretty excited to get into) because she's right, investing in our community is important. Especially now. So, thank you, Solange. Even though I only got to talk to you for a few minutes and probably didn't make the most of it, it really did make my day (and my life but anyway).

–kf