Solé is preparing herself for a return to the music industry. She left after being dissatisfied with the way the label was portraying her.

For nearly 20 years now, Solé has embarked upon a spiritual journey that has allowed her to re-center herself and align her Chakras.

I was able to spend sometime with her to ask a few questions. Learn what she has been doing in the exclusive interview below.

We’ve seen things written about the first song that people heard you on, which was JT Money’s “Who Dat” single, but I know that there was some sort of start before that.  Can you tell us how you got started into music?

It was a beginning way before that. I had been rapping and writing since I was a child. I started when I was about 6 when I heard Rappers Delight. Then hip-hop’s Golden Age came about… you were hearing more hip-hop records. And so I started rewriting other people’s music. I was probably about 12 or 13 maybe and I rewrote Run-DMC’s “My Adidas” and changed it into my Makita about my cat. And so that is kind of how I started writing. I started delving into writing my own and a brother from New York named Amir Ali who is a DJ, he worked with my brother and he heard me and was like, wow you kind of dope. I want to work with you. But I was really shy then so I was like let me see if my best friend wants to do something because we had been friends since we were five and both were performers. So we started a group called Divine when we were about 15 and started doing the whole talent show circuit in Kansas City and winning talent shows, opening up for all the major acts that came to Kansas City.

I met a lot of people that way, ended up winning a trip to BRE Convention (Black Radio Exclusive) they used to have in New Orleans. I don’t know if they still do that anymore. This was like in 1990 and I ended up subsequently getting offered a deal through JDK records. They had some type of affiliation with Run-DMC but my dad ended up not allowing us to sign the deal… (he) thought it wasn’t a good deal. We went to New York and recorded a little bit and then he (her dad) scrapped it. So I ended up taking some college courses, you know life happening – living my life just studying but circled back around to music in my early twenties in the mid to late ’90s and just knew that’s what I wanted to do.

So I ended up in L.A. and met a brother named TAB and he worked with “Tricky,” Christopher Stewart who has produced for every artist that you can imagine, from Beyoncé to Rihanna. He did Rihanna’s “Umbrella” and “Single Ladies” for Beyoncé and a lot of other songs. He and The-Dream worked together, but I was one of his first artists signed to Red Zone Entertainment.

So he signed me in… I think in ‘97 and then I ended up getting on….I had done other music since then. I had worked with Tech N9ne (we’re both from Kansas City)… we came up together. I did music with some other local Kansas City artists and actually did a couple other features before “Who Dat” actually came out. But that was the one that kind of put me on the map on a national and international level, before I even had my record deal – Tricky was working on that song for JT Money and asked me to be on this song and I wrote the verse in like 10 minutes and then that ended up getting me a publishing deal and then a record deal with DreamWorks Records.

So, yeah and then my album ends up coming out in 99, so it seemed like it was out of no where and overnight like….where’d she come from… but I had been honing my craft and you know working on those skills since I was like six.

How did you connect with him (JT Money) to get on the song?

I was only in L.A. for a short time when I met TAB and Tricky and they wanted me to come to Atlanta. So I ended up moving to Atlanta. Tricky was working on some music for JT.  Since I was his (Tricky) new artist, he put me on this song (“Who Dat”). Tricky was working on the song and said I’m gonna put her on the song… she’s dope. It was just as quick and easy as that, I wrote it in 10 minutes.

So you find yourself on “Who Dat.” What happens as a result? Did this fast forward your career?

It definitely did. That’s how I ended up with a publishing deal with Windswept. They offered me a publishing deal before I had a record deal because I wrote on the song. So I signed a publishing deal with them and then subsequently there were record deal offers that came after that. It absolutely propelled me and put me on National and International spotlight. In my area people knew me from performing, but that was actually the thing that put it over the top into a truly professional arena… and then having the opportunity to sign a record deal with the major label…which back then, at the time, you had to in order to be heard.

Now with social media, you could put something up on social media… you can decide, you can never have honed a skill in your life and decide that you want to be a rapper and then put a song up and people like it.  Social media is a gift and a curse. It’s kind of leveled the playing field and given people an opportunity that may not have gotten an opportunity before. Where back in the day, you had to be on a Major for the most part. Of course, there were independent artists like Master P. and people like Tech N9ne that came out and made their name for themselves and did very well independently.

But for the average artist, you were not going to have your music heard on a major scale without being signed to a major label. So social media has kind of leveled that playing field and given more people an opportunity. So, it has some advantages and ways to be able to promote yourself, but then the market is really heavily saturated now too. That’s not necessarily a bad thing either but it’s… just kind of the era that I come from where we really took it seriously…we took the art and the craft seriously where we rehearsed for hours. We took it seriously. It wasn’t just oh, I think I might want to do that. That might be fun or oh, I want to be famous or make a lot of money and just whatever because it’s easy to get on now, and it’s really not.

So not too long after that you released Skin Deep which was your only solo album to this point. Can you talk about skin deep and how that came together?

Yes, Skin Deep… Tricky produced the majority of that album. We started working on it right after the success of “Who Dat.” At the time a rap record hadn’t stayed on the rap singles chart for significant amounts of time. And so at the time, it broke records for being number one on the rap singles chart for eight weeks. And we also won a Billboard Award for it and I was nominated for rap artist of the year. Somebody told me recently too, that there have only been four women that have ever been nominated for rap artist of the year. I don’t know if that’s true. But somebody sent me something with my name on it and three other artists saying that there had only been three women ever.

So we recorded Skin Deep to follow up “Who Dat” and it did well. It was certified gold and the single “4,5,6” was the first one to come out and then we released “It Wasn’t Me.” The original version of “It Wasn’t Me” featured Jason Weaver (the actor). A lot of people didn’t know that it was originally recorded with Jason Weaver singing the hook and that’s who is sing the hook on the album. They (the record label) decided for marketing purposes, they wanted to put Ginuwine on it. So you see Ginuwine in the video and singing it. But if you bought the album, that’s Jason Weaver singing it.

So you record only one album and then you kind of exit the industry.

I actually recorded two. After Skin Deep, we recorded and completed the follow-up single and it was called “Fly Away.” We shot the cover art and released the single. The teaser single was sent out to DJ’s called “Never Had” and then the official single I think was going to be a song called “We Got.” And I just decided I didn’t want to do it. I felt like one, DreamWorks was known for its movie, you know it’s Steven Spielberg…their films – and the music department was new, it was a new endeavor and Gerald Busby, though he was a legend in the music industry; I felt like the direction they were trying to steer me into wasn’t really who I wanted to be and who I was… who I wanted to be authentically as an artist. I started also just having some reservations and…. inner promptings like not fully okay with the images I was portraying and lyrically some of the things I was writing and what I was promoting.

I had this epiphany that yeah, I don’t want to do this… not like this and it wasn’t what I wanted… and I wasn’t of the industry, like I hated the music. I love being creative. I loved writing. I love putting a show together, but I hated the music industry because people see what they think and who they think artists are but I was totally not what people imagined or thought of me. I was not a drinker, not a smoker, not a partier. None of those things. I’ve never been drunk in my life don’t do drugs…like super nerdy. I’ll go do my show and they would say it’s Sole and doing all this stuff and then I’m in the room ordering room service and reading a book… only going out if I’m getting paid to do a walk-through. And I didn’t enjoy doing that.

I never liked the club atmosphere. It was just so… really out of my element though I loved being a performer. So I just decided I’m not doing it. I’m not putting a record out. I’m not promoting it and I got my lawyer to get me a release from the label and I ended up being able to get released without owing any money.

It is difficult for artists to get out of those contracts. How did you manage this?

Yeah it’s very difficult. Luckily I had a good lawyer and there were loopholes and other things in the contract that allowed him to be able to work me out of it that different conflicts within the contract that he was able to find and get me out of the contract. And yeah, I mean it cost me money to pay him. But as far as being bound, I wasn’t and I was free. So I was grateful for that. For a brief moment I started looking for another deal. Like maybe I do want to sign somewhere else maybe someone else would get what I want to do and be. At that moment I still really didn’t even know who it was that I was and what I really wanted to be, but I didn’t think they got it either…what I was trying to do. And then I just left totally and said I don’t want to have anything to do with it and I went on this spiritual journey and this was probably about 2001.

So you walk away and start on this spiritual journey. What was the first step that you took to embark upon this new Journey?

The first step was going back to church because that is how I grew up… in church. I grew up in Southern Baptist Church. My mother was a gospel singer. She started out as a Jazz and R&B singer. She used to sing with Bloodstone, but she was ultimately a gospel singer at heart, so we went to church on Sundays and that’s how I grew up. But I also always had this direct connection that I always felt this spirit outside of a religious context. And so even as a young elementary school child, I was studying and interested in Buddhism and Islam and the religions of ancient Kemet… at the time I didn’t even know it was called Kemet. It was just Egyptian spirituality…so I started. Even though I was in the church, I always had this interest in wanting to know more about the rest of what the world had to offer in terms of spiritual practices and religion, so it started out in church.

I out grew it! I out grew that religious box and took a more spiritual path and into Eastern spiritualism. And the more I studied the more everything else made sense to me and the path ultimately brought me back to myself. And so…we say in Yoga… because I’m a Yoga teacher and Yogini, Yoga practitioner – Yoga is the Journey of the self, through the self, back to the self. So ultimately bringing you back to yourself and understanding that God truly resides on the inside of you and I want to find what you’re searching for outside. Everything you need is on the inside of you. So it was that Journey that took many years to get back to that place and really truly understanding that on a spirit level.

[jwplayer player=”1″ mediaid=”121927″]

How has this journey helped you mentally? Where do you sit right now with that?

It absolutely has informed how I write and what I write and what I put out there. I do fully understand that even in ignorance we’re still responsible for what we put out into the atmosphere. There is a debt and price to be paid for everything that we do… even done in ignorance because there are natural laws that we can’t bypass whether we want to or not. If we do something, something happens in response, even if it’s not immediate… and we don’t get to choose the consequence of our actions.

We just get to choose what we do and so it was a conscious decision. At one point I never wanted to do music again and I never thought I would and I didn’t see a place for what I thought I wanted to do in music, especially in the West. Especially in America! Because of what is always glorified which tends to be sex, violence, money, drugs, partying, fun and nothing that I was about fit into any of those categories unless you talked about sex from a sacred standpoint.

Nothing that I wanted to do fit in that. Where do I fit in? The whole industry had changed, has shifted from analog to digital. So it’s a totally different industry. So how do you even navigate, but I didn’t even want to. But I knew on a spiritual level that I had to and that it couldn’t be the only musical representation that I left here in the earth realm. I felt that it was my duty and responsibility to show that evolution, not to just put some… even though all of the music wasn’t bad, if go back to listen to my album I had positive messages littered with vulgarities, but there are positive messages there too.

So we fast forward to today, and you’ve just released a new single and a video with that single. Can you tell me a little bit about the new single?

The new single is called “Pranayama.” The literal meaning of Pranayama is the practice of controlling your breath. It’s one of the practices in Yoga that we use to help control the mind, help steady the mind to help bring you in the present moment… to be fully present in the now, to bring in more of Prana or vital life force because we bring the vital life force into our bodies through various ways with one of them being through breath.

So the song “Pranayama” I take some of these ancient concepts and put them in a way that’s palatable for someone that may not even know what any of it means but on a spirit level on a heart level feel it – I’ve had a lot of people after they hear the song say, “it just shifted something in me.” “I felt something shift and change” even though they don’t fully know all of it because I use a lot of symbolism in the song. I reference a lot of different… people have been messaging me trying to decode it.

I tend to write like that and a lot of times in code and symbolism. This seems to make it more interesting but while still getting a message, but it’s more of… I want the song to be felt from a heart state.

“Pranayama” is the new single. Has the release been a success at this point?

It’s doing much better than I anticipated because I tried to… I didn’t know what people’s reaction and response to it would be honestly. Throughout the process of recording this project because I’m almost finished with the full album. I’ve tried to really stay disconnected from thinking about the fruit of the work and just doing the work, because if I start thinking too much about… what are people going to think about this or who’s going to get this and who’s not.

I didn’t expect a whole lot, but for not having any backing accept what I’m doing on my own with my own financing, through social media and putting it out myself. I’ve had a lot of interest. I’ve had someone come to me interested in doing a positive reality show…and a lot of different things that started coming my way. It’s just been a lot of positive energy.

People are saying we need this breath of fresh air. All of these things that have been coming. So yeah, it’s getting a really good response. It’s only been out for a couple weeks now. I think I just released the video maybe a little over a week ago. I didn’t even have a YouTube page. I am just being normal and studying and going to classes and teaching classes and working my businesses that I own and doing those normal things. And so I was like, oh no, I like my privacy like yeah, you need a YouTube channel. So I created this new YouTube channel and I was like, okay, so I got a new YouTube channel. Now what… I got like two followers because it’s brand new.

I think the video has gotten about probably close to 30,000 views in one week and more than that on my Instagram because I do have a larger following on Instagram… close to a 100k.

The title of the EP is “Under The Veil.” What is the meaning behind the title?

So this “Under The Veil” is going to be the next single that I’ll release. When I talk about the veil, there’s another Yoga concept called Maya. And Maya is the illusion of this material world. So it’s sort of this power with which human beings believe in, which turned out to be a whole illusion. Which is this world that we live in. So not really truly understanding that the physical that all these physical things are Just an Illusion and not the true self. And so we talk, what’s really under the veil? What’s really real? What’s really true? And so I play upon that on the song talking about how we have these masks and Illusions and what you don’t really know what is truly beautiful until you look under the veil. Because all of these physical attributes and things that we see are just merely an illusion.

Not that they don’t have value, not that beauty doesn’t have value. But the highest form of beauty is the beauty of pure perception. So that realization of the oneness of being that we’re all one and we’re interconnected. So that’s what the song talks about. But in a way that doesn’t go so deep into concept that may not be grasped by the average person. It’s the song, it really is something that people can hear get and understand what it means.

Do you know people are going to call you a conscious rapper now?

I’ll take that. I hash tagged that on my post. I would much rather be that than some of the other thing I could be. I would hope they’d call me that.

What do you think constitutes a conscious Rapper?

It’s difficult for me to answer, because there’s a lot of what some of us would consider true consciousness and then the illusion of consciousness. But there’s also levels of consciousness. Consciousness is just the state of being awake…what level of consciousness… so everyone is to a certain degree conscious. Right!

But what level of consciousness are you operating on is the question. I know people think and here consciousness, they think someone that is talking about things that are bringing light and awareness to different types of situations that could be going on. So you could be considered a conscious rapper… Public Enemy is consider conscious but what they were talking about is bringing light to the plight of Black people in America and across the world and those types of social issues.

And then you have other artists that may be conscious but that may be talking about higher levels of consciousness on a spiritual level or what precedes spirituality. So, I think there can be different levels of consciousness. I think any time you start talking about anything outside of sex, money, drug, violence, and it’s positive, people deem it conscious. So, it’s kind of difficult to put a label on what actually is a conscious record or a conscious artist.  I think people know what they think it is when they hear it or feel it. But then I think then there are levels to that. Again what level of consciousness.

You mentioned Social Media a few minutes ago. Are you looking forward to communicating with people via Social Media?

Well, I do now. I have a decent social media following and I do communicate with people there and I share a lot. I had been doing this because I have a wellness practice also. I own a company called Devi Tribe Wellness. And so I teach… I’m a yoga teacher. I have a Black Belt in Kung Fu. I’m a Clinical Herbalist, Women’s Wellness coaching. I’m a Reiki Master. I teach a lot of Women’s Wellness practices. I do banquet and mystical dance, I’m a belly dancer.

So I have a full wellness practice that a lot of people on social media were coming to my page for that. So I amassed a following of people that knew who I was back in the day. Then other people that came and just stumbled upon and found me because of my wellness and yoga offerings and so there was a mixture. So I have been active on social media.

I do miss the days of it being very private, but I do know the benefits. It is also nice to be able to directly impact people as well in that way, but it is definitely times that I love to just put it down and set it to the side.

Where can people find all of your businesses?

You can find me find me at IAMSOLE.com which talks about my music has the new music there and also talks about what I do as a Wellness Practitioner and gives my bio and you can also download the single there. Then on the wellness site itself, is Devi Tribe Wellness www.devitribewellness.com and then on Instagram at MrsSole and there’s a link on there that links back to everything from the new YouTube page, to the two different places you can download the single, to my Wellness page and everything else there.

When can people look for that new project in 2019?

The end of Spring 2019. I’m leaving in February. I was going to be back in India, but I’m actually going to be in Thailand now for five weeks. So, once I come back in March we’ll be dropping the visual to “Under The Veil” and then a little bit after that the album. I don’t have the release date yet, but I’ll be letting that be known soon.

Is this a independent work of art for you?

Right, it is. It’s totally independent though there’s some interest from some labels. But as of right now, I haven’t taken any bites yet. I do want to keep it as authentic as possible. If the right situation came along possibly but, now I’m doing it fully on my own… my own dime. I am hands-on from directing the video to write new treatments to doing all the costuming. I did all that. I don’t want to ever give anybody full control over my content again.

Do you have any shout outs you want to give?

For sure. First if you’re in the Atlanta area, I am offering a workshop this weekend at YogaSkills Kemetic Yoga Studios. It’s a sacred dance and movement Workshop Saturday, December 22nd. And the information is on my IG at MrsSole or on my website DeviTribeWellness.com to get that information. I want to shout out Shawn Carter, not the Shawn Carter…not Jay-Z (Shawn Carter). But the other Shawn Carter who has been working diligent with me stepping in a management position right now just to help see this through. He’s out of Public Enemy’s camp. Of course my husband, Professor Griff because with him and my hype girl Herb Alchemist, who I call the hype Goddess… without them, the project wouldn’t have been manifest because I would still be dragging my feet and making herbs in the kitchen, which I still do and love doing but they’re like… when are you going to do the project and pushing me.