Solange Knowles recently revealed that she holed herself up in a house in Santa Barbara, CA for an entire month with just her musician pals for company, to work on the as-yet-untitled follow-up to 2008′s Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams.

“There was definitely a little bit of a breakdown involved. I literally gave up my sanity for a while to do this record. To the point to where I started doing it in Santa Barbara and I had to relocate to L.A. because I was losing it. We literally were waking up in the morning and just making music all day and all night. We left the house maybe three times!

“It just started to wear on me in so many different ways. I started having these crazy panic attacks. I can say that I totally sacrificed so much mentally, emotionally and financially to get this record the way I wanted it to be. It’s more than an album to me. It’s a transitional time in my life. This is a dance record, but the lyrics can get pretty dark at times.”

Solange says she relied on her mother, Tina, her sister Beyonce and her brother-in-law Jay-Z for help to look after her five-year-old son Julez while she was dealing with her personal issues – and her family is closer because of it.

“It brought me closer to my family, my dude and my son. My mum, sister and brother (in-law) all kept Julez for a week. Everybody cancelled work when I was going through it.”

Oh Solange…you’re so….special. I won’t rip her comments up and call her crazy, because she’s not. And I like Solange’s music I really do. I just think that a lot of these neo-soul type artists (Is Solo classified as neo-soul??) try so hard to be different, and so out of the box from everyone else, that in the end they sound, look, and act just alike. A lot of times it becomes so…extra, and seems contrived.