She’s thrilled to have a bun in the oven, and Beyoncé Knowles looks radiant on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar’sNovember 2011 issue.

The “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” songstress talks about her pregnancy and why she feels prepared to be a mother.

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She shared, “It was important to me that I gave myself time to focus on becoming the woman I want to be, building my empire, my relationship, and my self-worth, before I became a mother. Now God has blessed us with the ultimate.”

Beyonce also noted, “The best thing about marriage is the amount of growth you have because you can no longer hide from your fears and insecurities. There’s someone right there calling you out on your flaws and building you up when you need the support. If you are with the right person, it brings out the best version of you.”

When asked what advice she’d give her younger self, Knowles replied, “I would tell myself to trust myself. I am finally at the stage in my life where I am not so concerned with other people’s opinions about my life decisions. It is so liberating to really know what I want, what truly makes me happy, what I will not tolerate. When I was younger I had a hard time setting boundaries.”

And besides being a prolific musician, Beyonce revealed that she also has a love for art. “My mother has been an art collector and always taught me the value of art. She has encouraged me to invest in art since I can remember. The first artist I was truly inspired by was Vincent van Gogh. I was 17 and began doing my own paintings. I used to copy his style. When I was 20 I visited the Sistine chapel and saw Michelangelo’s work and it was one of the most spectacular experiences of my life. I then went on a tour around Europe and visited all the places Picasso and Matisse hung out. I then visited Art Basel and was exposed to all kind of contemporary artists. It got me into art that’s more abstract. Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring are two of my favorites but I appreciate so many contemporary artists. Art inspires me in so many ways. I use art as reference when I’m looking for inspiration for my performances, wardrobe or a video I might be working on. My husband and I collect all types of art from Basquiat and Warhol to Marilyn Minter.”

Beyoncé fans and fashion lovers are going to be happy about this: In celebration of our September cover girl,we’ve released three glorious minutes of footage from her cover shoot! After an intro by Beyoncé’s publicist, Yvette Noel-Schurre, the video heads straight into the envy-inducing shoes, sexy dresses, and—yes, believe it—the live snake that earned a cameo role on the pages of the fashion feature. Head to InStyle‘s Facebook page now (you must “Like” us in order to view) to see the exclusive footage and go behind the scenes. Bonus: The video is set to Beyoncé’s “I Was Here” from her new album, 4, available on iTunes.

Beyoncé is InStyle’s September cover girl! After a nine-month break from touring, we catch up with the superacheiver to talk happiness, sanity, new projects (her album 4 and her perfume Pulse), and running the world. “I sacrificed so much as a kid and as a teenager,” she says. “I have no regrets because my job kept me focused. When you’re young—18 or 19—you have the energy and drive. That’s the time to work as hard as you can. Now I’m a woman, and because I gave it my all, I can focus on my marriage. I can decide I want to have kids. I can be the mother I want to be and dedicate myself to my children.” Though, when she gets down time, she maximizes it. “In my free time I prefer to do nothing but sit on the couch and watch TV,” she says. “I have to confess that my guilty pleasure is Jersey Shore.” And throughout everything, she always makes time for friendship. “I am a girl’s girl. Women who don’t have female friends scare me. I love my friends, and I love sitting with them and listening to their stories.” For more of our exclusive interview with Beyoncé, pick up the new September issue of InStyle, on newsstands Friday.

Cover: Dolce & Gabbana dress and necklace. Photo: Dior fox fur bolero, OMO Norma Kamali swimsuit, Robert Cavalli scarf, Stephen Dweck cuff, Ernesto Esposito heels.

Beyonce sparkles in Dolce&Gabbana on the cover of InStyle magazine’s September 2011 issue.

Here’s what the 29-year-old entertainer had to share with the mag:

On not having regrets after working hard: “I sacrificed so much as a kid and as a teenager. I have no regrets because my job kept me focused. When you’re young – 18 or 19 – you have the energy and drive. That’s the time to work as hard as you can. Now I’m a woman, and because I gave it my all, I can focus on my marriage. I can decide I want to have kids. I can be the mother I want to be and dedicate myself to my children.”

On what she does during her downtime:“In my free time I prefer to do nothing but sit on the couch and watch TV. I have to confess that my guilty pleasure is Jersey Shore.”

On making time for friendship: “I am a girl’s girl. Women who don’t have female friends scare me. I love my friends, and I love sitting with them and listening to their stories.”

For more from Bey, visit InStyle.com!

Beyoncé Cover’s the UK Harper’s Bazaar:

Check out Beyoncé‘s AMAZING feature for Complex Magazine.

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Via Complex.com: Conventional wisdom holds that people should be afraid of turning 30. It’s the dreaded age when the biological clock starts tickin’ with the menace of a time bomb. Thirty is the point at which someone can call a woman “old”—and she will actually believe it. Conventional wisdom says that turning 16, 18, and 21 kicks ass. Turning 30 kicks rocks.

Of course conventional wisdom isn’t all that wise. Thirty ain’t all that bad. (In truth, women tend to be the most well-rounded and sexiest during their 30s. #justsayin) Still, it has a way of focusing people. Beyoncé Giselle Knowles turns 30 in September. She’s acutely aware of time slipping into the future. Her ticking clock, however, has nothing to do with insecure thoughts of feeling old or washed up. Not by a long shot.

No, Beyoncé is in a race against time because of a simple, bluntly put question: Where the f*&k does she go from here? What does thirtysomething feel like if you’ve accomplished everything most people could ever dream of—wealth, fame, artistic accolades, love—in your teens and twenties?

It turns out that, for Beyoncé, the answer to that question is equally simple (and bluntly put). Where does she go? Wherever the f*&k she wants to. Bey has spent the last 15 years paying dues. Now a worldwide icon, she has set her heart and mind to establishing a legacy that she’s determined will be dictated by artistic freedom. She’s not afraid of turning 30. If anything, the world should be afraid of her turning 30.

In March 2010, Beyoncé came off the world tour for her album, I Am…Sasha Fierce, and did something she hadn’t really done as an adult: She lived a normal life. After years maintaining a grueling work schedule that included exhaustive touring, she took a much-needed vacay. For the next year, she did all sorts of—for her—novel things. She slept in her own bed for days at a time. She went to concerts and movies and museums with friends. She spent time picking through the iTunes of her younger sister, Solange (who has a side gig as a DJ and whom Bey credits as her unofficial A&R), playing with her nephew, and watching documentary footage of Jean-Michel Basquiat painting from scratch.

Of course the whole “vacay” concept is a little different for Beyoncé. (For one, she traveled, too. And suffice it to say that you and I aren’t invited to a lot of the places she visited.) What did you do on your vacation? Well, the hardest working woman in entertainment started a production company and learned how to edit movies. And, in studios across the world, she recorded more than 60 songs, 12 of which appear on her latest album, 4, which was officially released in June. You see, whereas a yearlong hiatus for one of us might involve an inordinate number of hours spent in our pajamas, for Beyoncé, even downtime is work time. “I traveled; I read; I watched films,” she says. “Inspiration is all around us every second of the day.”

The inspiration for 4 came from a variety of sources, with the end result being something that doesn’t sound exactly like any of them. Dissatisfied with the state of contemporary radio, she set about brewing a concoction entirely of her own design, based on influences you’d expect her to cite, as well as ones that might surprise. “Figuring out a way to get R&B back on the radio is challenging,” she explains. “Everything sounds the same on the radio. With 4 I tried to mix R&B from the ’70s and the ’90s with rock ‘n’ roll and a lot of horns to create something new and exciting. I wanted musical changes, bridges, vibrata, live instrumentation, and classic songwriting.”

She started the process by jamming with the band from Fela!, the Broadway musical based on the life of Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti, and recorded tracks everywhere from New York to Australia to Peter Gabriel’s studio in the English countryside city of Bath. And—hewing again to the “no rules” mantra of the process—she worked with collaborators both old (The-Dream, Babyface) and new (Switch, Sleigh Bells). She even chopped it up with Odd Future. “Jay had a CD playing in the car one Sunday when we were driving to Brooklyn,” she recalls of hearing Frank Ocean for the first time. “I noticed his tone, his arrangements, and his storytelling. I immediately reached out to him—literally the next morning. I asked him to fly to New York and work on my record.”

Andre 3000 is also on board. He makes an appearance on the Kanye West-produced track “Party.” Although it wasn’t her first time working with ’Ye, Beyoncé was particularly keen to reconvene in the studio with the man who made the moody “Runaway,” a song that drove her to the edge of tears the first time she heard it in a van heading to one of Jay’s shows. ’Ye played it for Bey on his birthday.

“The fact that he’s belting out his pain, his confusion, and his anger, with no pre-written lyrics, was so moving,” she says. “He’s singing his heart out for five minutes. He is so vulnerable. I love when an artist can be so honest.”

Released in April, the lead single, “Run the World (Girls),” swagger-jacked the beat from Major Lazer’s “Pon de Floor,” but it’s Bey’s full-throated vocal styling and her trademark feminist stamp that made the insane and souped-up riddim her own.

“I’ve found that with hit records the melody and lyrics come together [naturally],” she explains. “I usually know from the hook if the song is something that transcends language, race, and genre, and if it’s something that affects pop culture. It’s something I can visualize people singing in stadiums all over the world. But my favorite songs on my albums are usually not my singles.”

The world premiere of the “Run” video was, as expected, an event, presenting a post-Rapture world of sandy destruction and kinetic dancing. Bey channeled a bit of Tina Turner in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome mixed with a dash of Grace Jones in Conan the Destroyer, symbolically demonstrating that her drive to take over the world is still in effect.

Before she takes over the world, though, Beyoncé is taking control of her career. In March, she announced that she would no longer be managed by her father, Mathew Knowles. Both sides took pains to describe the split as amicable, but it was nonetheless a giant step for an artist whose family has played such a vital role in her career. Still, it’s a natural progression, and it’s not as if she doesn’t have other family members to bounce ideas off these days.

“Jay’s music is more than music. His lyrics have fathered generations,” she says of her husband of three years. “All that he has overcome gives millions so much hope. There are moments when I see his lips moving and I can see lyrics floating above his head and I think, ‘Wow! How did I get so lucky to be able to witness this level of genius so closely?’”

Whenever I feel bad, I use that feeling to motivate me to work harder,” says a much wiser, more mature Beyoncé, who learned from some early ordeals, including a period of depression during the first breakup of her first group, Destiny’s Child. “I only allow myself one day to feel sorry for myself. People who complain really get on my nerves. When I’m not feeling my best I ask myself, ‘What are you gonna do about it?’ I use the negativity to fuel the transformation into a better me.”

That same call for inner strength was loudly spelled out in Destiny’s Child’s string of smash hits. Songs like “Independent Woman Part 1,” “Survivor,” and the extra-jelly-is-A-OK anthem “Bootylicious” forever linked DC with the term “female empowerment.” As a solo artist, Beyoncé would continue belting out pro-female calls to arms like “Irreplaceable” and “Best Thing I Never Had,” the second single (co-written by Babyface) from 4. Lines like “You showed your ass and I, I saw the real you” and “Oh yeah, I bet it sucks to be you right now,” have become the sassy method by which Bey can connect with her female listeners (the fellas can’t deny the tracks either).

Admittedly, there are times when the female unity is not so unified, like when Beyonce was photographed for the artwork of the “Best Thing” single. She wrote “King B” on a mirror with red lipstick, a nod to womanly control. The problem was that noted video director/tastemaker Vashtie Kola had previously appropriated the royal moniker for herself, and made a sly remark on Twitter about Bey’s use of it.

There have been other confrontational moments—or, at least, perceived conflict. A portion of the public has been convinced for a while now that there’s tension between Beyoncé and her ex-bandmate Kelly Rowland despite the two of them denying reports and appearing together in public as friends. The fact that both released singles on the same day back in ’08 was somehow interpreted to mean that Bey was trying to sabotage Kelly. (This year, the Internet went nuts when Rowland’s latest single, “Motivation,” toppled “Run the World” on iTunes, as if it was some sort of karma.) The gossip queens also insisted there would be a full-scale war between Beyoncé and Lady Gaga even though the two have collaborated twice in the past. The rumors, as it turned out, were just that—rumors.

Then, of course, there is Bey’s “rival” Rihanna. This “feud” at least makes sense to a degree, even if both women have insisted there is no rivalry. The Bajan superstar, who has had a shorter yet stellar career of her own, has repeatedly (and respectfully) stated in interviews that she has always looked up to Beyonce, rightfully so.

Bey, who continually makes Forbes lists and racks up Grammys (her six wins in one night at the 2010 ceremony is a record for a female artist), doesn’t fret too much over the drama—even if you can tell the question irks her, simply in the asking. “There is room on this earth for many queens,” she begins diplomatically, before drawing a few not-at-all subtle lines of distinction. “I have an authentic, God-given talent, drive, and longevity that will always separate me from everyone else. I’ve been fortunate to accomplish things that the younger generation of queens dream of accomplishing. I have no desire for anyone else’s throne. I am very comfortable in the throne I’ve been building for the past 15 years.”

The funny thing is, her effortless comfort in that throne is the thing that separates her from the competition—the Queen is a commoner at heart. She’s chummy with Oprah and sang the first dance for the new generation President and his wife, but she’ll stop and boogie at a block party while visiting her mother-in-law in West Orange, New Jersey (as captured on a YouTube clip last year).

Beyoncé’s not claiming perfection; she’d just like to be afforded the freedom that goes with being what she rightfully is: one of the most accomplished recording artists of the 21st century. She’d like to explain to you what that’s like, but ultimately, she’s the only one who really knows how it feels. “It’s important to have no boundaries in my music,” she muses. “The beautiful thing about art is that you can create a fantasy in your mind about what you think a song is about. Only the writer truly knows what or whom the song is about.”

Talent and drive. Style and design. The former may come naturally, but the latter are products of work, work, and more work: “I just want my legacy to be great music. Someone who was a risk taker and someone who had songs that struck conversation and emotion.” You can be afraid of 30 if you want, but that’s not what’s keeping Beyonce up at night.

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