Solange: Don’t You Wait for Me
How Solange Knowles stepped out from the shadow of her sister to become a groundbreaking artist in her own right with albums A Seat at the Table and When I Come Home.
In 2016, Solange’s A Seat at the Table debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 US album chart. Her 2019 follow-up, When I Come Home, was an even more audacious exploration of R&B, soul, psychedelica, jazz, hip-hop, and what it means to be black in America. She has headlined Primavera Sound festival and performed a ‘flawless’ sundown set at Glastonbury 2017, which the Guardian described as their highlight of the weekend. She won a Grammy for Best R&B Performance and her last two albums were both named in Pitchfork’s Best Albums of the 2010s list. Yet Solange’s career started 20 years ago, and her debut album was released in 2002. How did she go from the periphery of generic, mainstream chart music to widespread critical acclaim on her own terms? What led to her reincarnation; from Solange Knowles to Solange?
Popstar-in-training
Solange Knowles was travelling down a typical path for someone looking to succeed in the same industry as their mega-famous older sibling; the next prodigious talent from the Knowles family production line, the heir to the throne. Her father – Mathew Knowles – had already overseen the unparalleled success of his eldest daughter’s group, Destiny’s Child, which made superstars of Beyoncé, Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams. I will go out on a limb and assume that you are familiar with them. Having served as an executive producer and manager to Beyoncé and Destiny’s Child, Mathew began to mastermind a similar plan for his younger daughter. Popstar training 101.
Solange’s teenage years were full of exposure to many of the aspects of life in the entertainment industry. She was one of the backup dancers for Destiny’s Child, allowing her to experience a gruelling touring schedule and perform in front of huge crowds; she had her first taste of studio recording sessions, appearing on Destiny’s Child’s 8 Days of Christmas aged 15 and then releasing her own debut album a year later; she even followed in Beyoncé’s footsteps by boosting her profile via acting roles, appearing in cheerleading sequel Bring It On: All Or Nothing.
Like those early forays into show business, Solange’s initial musical output took a similarly textbook approach for an emerging pop artist. Her debut album, Solo Star, was released by Columbia Records in 2003, when Solange was 16. Exec produced by her father, it is a collection of songs that fit the mould of the generic R&B sound of the era, taking a steer from Brandy and the other iconic female voices of the late 90s. The Knowles family address book was put to work and favours were called in with the industry’s hottest hitmakers; the album features production from The Neptunes and Timbaland, plus songwriting credits for Pharrell and Beyoncé. Solo Star clearly introduces Solange’s talent – she co-wrote the majority of the album, as well as receiving credit as a co-producer on a handful of the songs – but it comes off feeling plastic and semi-manufactured. Does Solo Star offer any hint of the boundary-pushing direction that Solange eventually takes? Not at all – but it’s hard to be critical when you consider that this is a 16-year-old’s debut album.
The follow-up to a pop artist’s debut is often referred to as the mature second album, where their sound evolves and they develop as a songwriter. For Solange, it meant maturing in a different way; in the six years between her first and second albums, she had married and given birth to a son by the time she was 18, then went through a divorce two years later.
While she was dealing with a lot of change in her personal life, Solange’s career remained aimed towards upbeat pop success. Her second album, Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams, was released in 2008. Like Solo Star, Mathew Knowles assumed the role of executive producer and assembled a cast of in-demand songwriters and producers, once again looking to harness those who were operating at the top of their game to bring ideas to the table. Mark Ronson, fresh from picking up three Grammys for his work with Amy Winehouse, and Cee-Lo Green, riding the wave of his smash hit ‘Crazy’, both contributed songwriting credits. While debut Solo Star looked to the R&B of the early 2000s, with input from Timbaland and Pharrell, Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams shifted towards a 60s-inspired sound; a combination of classic Motown soul and the modern interpretation that was being spearheaded by Ronson at the time, with some more abstract Erykah Badu-esque ideas weaved throughout.
The album was a second attempt to achieve mainstream pop success, and the stylistic shift appears to have been dictated by the artists who dominated the charts at the time of each album’s release; Solo Star’s keys and drum machines that drew from the contemporary R&B of the early 2000s, then Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams’ horns and live instrumentation, which was seeing a resurgence in popularity via the 60s revival sound. Solange’s second album did bring her moderate praise and chart success, but it still feels lacking in some way. Debuting at number 9 on the Billboard 200 album chart is a major achievement, but the album remains very surface level; it’s unashamedly generic pop, a collection of individual songs without a cohesive structure or overall artistic vision. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that if it’s the path you have chosen to follow, but clearly Solange had something else within her that was bursting to get out, something beyond mainstream pop music.
It’s worth stating that this isn’t supposed to suggest that this path – the backup dancing, the acting appearances, the mainstream musical direction – was all forced on Solange by an overbearing parent; I’m sure she was delighted to achieve things that most teenagers could only dream of. She recently described being a dancer for Destiny’s Child as her ‘dream job’, and what aspiring singer wouldn’t jump at the chance to work with Pharrell, Timbaland, or Q-Tip? It’s more to say that it seems like there was an outside influence on these choices, either consciously or subconsciously; maybe even the convenience of having access to this world without stepping outside of your comfort zone.
A hint to Solange’s future direction is nestled near the end of her second album. Amongst the upbeat, soulful pop of Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams sits ‘This Bird’, a collaboration with Scottish downbeat electronica duo Boards of Canada. It seems so left-field compared to the rest of the album; the detuned synth-pads in the rhythm-less ambient production come from a completely different world than the horn section and guitars favoured in the album’s other songs.
Where did this come from? How did Solange come to collaborate with a Scottish ambient duo known for releasing on seminal techno label Warp Records, which is also home to Aphex Twin and Autechre?
When appearing on Questlove Supreme – the podcast hosted by Ahmir Thompson aka Questlove, producer, DJ and drummer for The Roots – Solange spoke about her time touring Europe as a backup dancer for Destiny’s Child. Whilst on the road, she was exposed to European music radio and namechecked Bjork, Chemical Brothers and Boards of Canada as artists that she discovered a newfound love for. She returned to the US and tried to turn her fellow 15-year-old high school classmates on to the obscure stylings of Boards of Canada; they weren’t convinced.
So while a teenage Solange was touring Europe in a very mainstream capacity with Destiny’s Child, likely seen as preparation for her own future pop career, a serendipitous exposure to abstract, downbeat electronica plants a seed that will present itself years later, resulting in an abrupt left-turn musically, directing Solange away from mainstream trends and towards harnessing her talent to release the music she was destined to make.
Solange closed the chapter on her pop career with the aptly titled ‘Fuck the Industry’, an originally unreleased song that was put out digitally after she was dropped by Geffen Records following the underwhelming response to Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams. The song samples Kanye West’s ‘Everything I Am’ from his album Graduation, with Solange lamenting the music industry over the instantly recognisable DJ Premier-produced piano melody and vinyl scratches. She covers the comparisons to her sister (‘I’ll never be picture perfect Beyonce’ – a line that Kanye also uses in his version), her refusal to conform to the expected look of a contemporary R&B artist (‘I barely comb my hair, yeah, that's on a good day’ and ‘I'm sorry I ain't in the Benzes in my videos/I'm sorry I ain't even really trying to match my clothes’), and even how industry figures tried to pigeon-hole her in to their idea of how she should behave (‘Solo, can you tone it down? be more like them/but everything I'm not makes me everything I am’). Ironically, the song appears on Spotify as a bonus track for Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams, the album whose poor performance inspired the song. Solange signs off by returning to the key message of the song; ‘I'm just saying to the industry, this is fuck you, signed sincerely’.
L to R, clockwise: Pharrell and Solange in the studio; Dev Hynes and Pharrell during the making of her EP True; Solange
Independence
Without a label, Solange was free to explore new ideas without the immediate pressure of sales and deadlines, or the expectancy to make something that fit into a label’s expectation of her work. Like the exposure that led her to find Boards of Canada, she returned to Europe – London, this time – for her next collaborative partner; Dev Hynes. Hynes, who also releases music under the name Blood Orange, is known for an R&B-infused electronica sound with clear references to 80s pop. His track ‘You’re Not Good Enough’ from his second Blood Orange album, Cupid Deluxe, is about as close to Prince as you’ll get in terms of 21st century releases; the funk guitar, the drum machine with chunky, reverberating toms, and the layered, feminine vocals are all plucked straight from the playbook of The Purple One himself.
In Hynes, Solange found a kindred spirit; someone who she had immediate creative chemistry with. She had initially planned to work with other producers, but quickly decided that her next release would only feature the work from the sessions with Hynes.
‘There were other producers who were working with us as well and it just became really clear to me that the music me and Dev were creating together was very special, and from then I just transitioned into wanting Dev to produce the EP’
- Solange on Dev Hynes
The resulting project was True, a seven-song extended play (EP) co-written and produced by Solange and Hynes. An accomplished, cohesive collection of tracks, True referenced the same new-wave influences as Hynes’ Blood Orange sound; inspired by the pop music of the early 80s, where the live instrumentation of the funk and soul of the 70s made way for synthesisers and drum machines. Lead single ‘Losing You’ feels like a companion piece to the aforementioned ‘You’re Not Good Enough’ – the two were released less than a year apart – and it is the best example of the EP’s overall vibe. Despite the presence of upbeat and uplifting elements to each song, there is an overarching melancholic atmosphere; you can dance to these songs, but there is power and sadness in Solange’s lyrics. There’s a clear stylistic contrast with Solange’s earlier work, but also a change in how the making of the EP itself impacted her. In an interview with Vibe, she described True as ‘more than’ an EP, which came at a ‘transitional time in (her) life’. Having full creative control allowed her to put more of herself in to the project, but it took more from her as a result; she suffered from panic attacks and spoke of having to ‘give up (her) sanity’ to pour as much of herself in to the songs as she could, something she hadn’t had the freedom to do before.
True was initially released digitally, before being picked up for physical release by Brooklyn-based label Terrible Records. Terrible was already home to Hynes’ Blood Orange, as well as other genre-straddling acts like Moses Sumney and Grizzly Bear. It looked as if Solange had finally found an environment where she could flourish; the independent, semi-underground and under-the-radar world of Brooklyn hipsters. With this fresh acceptance, with the new creative direction that fused R&B, electronica and just enough indie, did Solange ride off into the distance, living happily ever after in the world of art gallery DJ sets and Williamsburg vintage clothes stores?
Not quite. Bizarrely, certain sections of New York’s independent music scene seemed to take issue with Solange’s presence in their world. She was called a ‘blipster’ (black hipster) by prominent satirical blog Hipster Runoff and accused of trying to appear indie to set herself apart from her older sister. The negativity came from the same people who were happy to ogle Beyoncé and Jay-Z when Solange brought them to a Grizzly Bear show in Brooklyn; it is even said that the exposure to this music was a catalyst for Beyoncé’s collaborations with the likes of James Blake and Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig.
New York Times writer Jon Caramanica went as far as saying Solange’s success was down to the fact that her music had been released on Terrible Records, which is the label run by Grizzly Bear’s bassist, Chris Taylor. When Solange responded to the suggestion that she was somehow artificial in her indie manoeuvres with a series of scathing tweets, Caramanica offered a patronising reminder that Solange should be wary of ‘biting the hand that feeds her’, suggesting that she shouldn’t bite back at the indie journalists who he believed had facilitated the acclaim that she was receiving.
The whole episode comes across as typical of the self-proclaimed indie purists that exist in every city’s music scene. Carrying themselves with off-the-charts pretentiousness, they are happy to accept Solange into their circle and receive exposure from their association with her, yet don’t like it when her success transcends the scene itself. I mean, I would never have mentioned Grizzly Bear if it wasn’t for their close association to Terrible Records and therefore Solange – she did them a favour, not the other way about. Sections of the scene turned their nose up, decrying Solange’s lack of indie credentials and her connection to mainstream music via her sister, whilst posing as struggling independent creatives living hand-to-mouth, whose parents’ trust fund probably funds their indie New York City lifestyle. As James Barber (Geffen A&R exec) said in Lizzie Goodman’s Meet Me in the Bathroom, an encyclopaedia of the New York indie scene from 2001 to 2011, the scene’s paradoxical attitude of anti-success is ‘connected with people who can afford to have these attitudes’.
This backlash from simply existing in a world that Solange wasn’t typically associated with inspired her next move. Rather than find another label that allowed her the freedom to organically work on her new musical direction, she decided to start her own; Saint Records. The label would be home to Solange’s upcoming third full-length album, as well as focusing on other emerging artists. To mark the launch of Saint Records, Solange curated a compilation album as the label’s first release; titled Saint Heron, her intention was to ‘feature, highlight and align a new movement of contemporary, genre-defying R&B visionaries’. The compilation included previously unreleased material from the likes of Kelela, Cassie, and Solange herself; though most importantly featured Solange’s first collaboration with English musician, Sampha.
Sampha Sisay had already gained recognition in the UK as a result of his work with SBTRKT and Jessie Ware, regarded as a notable vocalist and producer from the flourishing UK bass scene, the name used as a catch-all for UK artists who had emerged from the ashes of dubstep and were making downtempo, sub-heavy music in the late 2000s/early 2010s; artists like The xx, Joy Orbison, and James Blake. Sampha’s career in music started as an intern at XL Recordings, the peerless genre-traversing label who count Radiohead, Adele, The Prodigy, Dizzee Rascal, and M.I.A. amongst their alumni. It took him a long time to build up the courage to announce himself as a performer despite working for a seminal record label; in Liberation Through Hearing, XL boss Richard Russell’s autobiography, Russell said that he didn’t even know he was making music despite him working at the label for years. ‘Hold On’ by SBTRKT, which featured Sampha on vocals, became an underground anthem and propelled Sampha to a new position as a sought-after collaborator; his soft, haunting vocals being utilised on tracks by artists like Kanye West and Drake. These guest spots led Solange to approach him to be a key collaborator on her next album; A Seat at the Table. Oh, and just for good measure – Sampha went on to win the prestigious Mercury Prize for his debut album, Process, in 2017.
A Seat at the Table
After the false starts and setbacks, with her own label and full creative freedom, Solange was ready to make what would become her magnum opus. To borrow from Patrick Bateman; when A Seat at the Table came out in 2016, Solange really came in to her own; commercially and artistically.
Lyrically, A Seat at the Table explores Solange’s life, her experiences as a black woman in the music industry, and the wider racial landscape in America. In her conversation on Questlove Supreme, Solange describes an incident at a Kraftwerk concert in Louisiana. Attending with her pre-teen son and second husband, Solange and her party were racially abused and hit with objects while dancing in the balcony section of the theatre. To have experienced such blatant racism, especially in front of her young son, pushed the lyrics and theme of the album further towards the exploration of America’s rife, endemic problem with racism.
Her lyrics are supplemented by spoken word interlude tracks which sit between certain songs; snippets of conversations with Master P, a rapper and self-made music entrepreneur who also hails from Solange’s home state of Louisiana, and her parents, appear throughout the album. They provide soundbites that summarise the older generation’s experiences of racial discrimination; what they tell us is that some things haven’t changed, despite these experiences being decades apart. Solange’s parents, who are divorced and hadn’t spoken for years, were blindsided; neither of them knew the other would be there for the recording of the conversations, though they said it was cathartic to open up in each other’s company, and that this provoked a rawer response to Solange’s prompts.
The album’s sound transcends any single genre. It draws from R&B, soul and hip-hop fused with downbeat electronica; a melting pot of styles reflecting Solange’s musical influences and the styles of the album’s key collaborators. Like her earlier work, she brings a host of artists on board; the key difference now is that these collaborators are brought in to help facilitate Solange, who remains the guiding vision, the writer and producer of every song.
Aside from Solange, Raphael Saadiq – known for working closely with J-Dilla, Q-Tip and D’Angelo – contributes the most to the album. Solange described his input as instrumental to the album’s direction, eulogising on Questlove’s podcast about Saadiq’s ‘emotional’ basslines; they are never far from the forefront of the songs that he features on, ascending or descending towards a chorus, providing an emotional, heartbeat-like groove to tracks like ‘Weary’ and ‘Cranes in the Sky’.
Sampha is another collaborator with multiple co-writing or production credits on the album. He told Red Bull Radio that it was ‘the most fulfilling collaboration of (his) career so far’, describing Solange’s attention to detail, the need for every element of each song to fit her vision perfectly; ‘I learned a lot from her, just watching her work, in terms of just how closely she works on everything, like every aspect of her output, whether it be production or the songwriting’.
A Seat at the Table remains cohesive whilst fusing these starkly different musical styles; it features a lot of live instrumentation yet can feel like a collection of samples, of ideas perfectly pieced together. This is, in part at least, down to the production and recording process of the album, which took three years. Starting in 2013, Solange would compose and gather ideas through extended jam sessions in Long Island and New Orleans, with likes of Sampha, Olugbenga (of Metronomy), Adam Bainbridge (aka Kindness), and Sean Nicholas Savage. She would build the foundation of a song – like a drumbeat and chord progression – then loop this and experiment with vocal lines, song motifs, and lead parts. These would be layered on top of each other, sometimes going for hours. These ideas would essentially be banked and kept in the vault for the album, returned to, tweaked, and chopped; Solange went through a process of moulding each song over months or years before they were fine-tuned and settled on for the final cut of the album.
L to R; Solange; Solange and her son, Julez; Solange, Olugbenga and Sampha during production
The album opens with ‘Rise’, originally written as a response to the protests in Ferguson and Baltimore following two police shootings of unarmed black men. It’s a downbeat, 90-second call to arms, with a simple, bare piano mirroring Solange’s vocal melody, before a cymbal crash introduces a laidback bassline. The song fades to silence midway through before exploding back in to life with an Isley Brothers ‘Summer Breeze’-esque high pitched drone, the repeated lyric flipped from ‘fall in your ways’ to ‘walk in your ways’; Solange encouraging that adversity is used to walk stronger and continue the fight.
‘Weary’ follows; possibly the strongest song on the album. It starts as a seemingly simple song with three stripped-back parts; piano chords, a bassline consisting of a few individual licks, and pounding toms. As Solange laments the ways of the world and her position in it, the song continues to build layer after layer on top of the initial foundation that started the song; it’s one of the album’s jam sessions unfolding in our ears. A chopped ragtime piano lick enters, somewhere between Joplin’s ‘The Entertainer’ and the main hook from Jay-Z’s ‘Lost One’, along with arresting Janet Jackson-style backing vocals, also courtesy of Solange, which initially supplement the main melody before adding layer after layer on top. One of Saadiq’s emotional basslines is front and centre, adding groove to this melancholic song, and hidden under the bassline is some Warp Records-style bleeps; Solange’s old influences from her time in Europe showing their face.
After the first Master P interlude comes ‘Cranes in the Sky’, which understandably earned Solange her Grammy for Best R&B Performance. Solange wrote ‘Cranes in the Sky’ eight years prior to releasing this album. After Raphael Saadiq gave her a CD of demos in 2008, Solange wrote the song in a Miami hotel room, detailing her attempts to rid herself of the pain of the divorce to her first husband. The song is powerful, almost theatrical; as if a character in a Broadway musical is on stage lamenting about something. The slow vibrato of the string section and the Japanese wind-chime synth scales give the song a floating, dream-like quality that aligns with the song’s title; you can almost picture a performance of the song taking place in the clouds above a city. While a lazy comparison, it’s also unavoidable; this feels like the album’s closest thing to a Beyoncé song, something you could imagine being part of one of her own visual albums. For the avoidance of doubt, this is obviously a good thing; it’s not a wannabe Beyoncé tribute, it’s a song Beyoncé wishes she had in her songbook.
Solange showcases her vocal talents in ‘Mad’, backed by another stripped-back R&B production with a grooving Saadiq bassline and staccato piano stabs. The vocal delivery in the intro and verses give off a clear impression of Solange having fun, her layered vocals sounding like a group of friends harmonising while they are getting ready for a night out. After a forgettable Lil’ Wayne verse, Solange’s vocals on the chorus flip to full on Minnie Ripperton ‘Les Fleurs’-levels of angelic delivery, as she tells the listener to ‘let your love go’ with ever-increasing falsetto.
‘Don’t You Wait’ is a stylistic shift from the songs before it, likely a result of it being the first track to step aside from the core production collaboration between Solange and Saadiq and instead introduce some of the other musicians who worked on the album; the first appearance for Sampha, Olugbenga, Kwes, Kindness, and Dave Longstreth (of Dirty Projectors). It’s based around a retro-sounding pulsating bass and guitar line – big time Todd Terje/Gran Tourismo menu music vibes – and another uplifting chorus. Solange tells us that she can do things at her own pace, then takes shots at Caramanica’s earlier comments about her association with New York’s predominantly white indie scene. She didn’t want to bite back against some of the criticism of her during her time at Terrible Records, just like black slaves in America didn’t want to build the country from the ground up, but sometimes these things are forced upon you; ‘I don't want to bite the hand that'll show me the other side/but I didn't want to build the land that has fed you your whole life’.
On short interlude ‘Tina Taught Me’, Solange’s mother discusses her sadness about the apparent anti-white sentiment of being proudly black over four ascending bass notes. The bassline from the interlude bleeds into the next track, continuing as the main chord progression for another of the album’s highlights; ‘Don’t Touch My Hair’.
With detuned synth pads and woodblock percussion heavily laced with reverb, ‘Don’t Touch My Hair’ is the album’s most downbeat, electronic UK Bass-influenced track. Sampha’s influence is felt throughout; he sings the chorus’ hook and is co-writer of the song. As the track progresses towards the chorus, it blends the typically electronic elements with other musical worlds; first with a baroque-sounding arpeggio and then full-on trumpet and flugelhorn under Sampha’s lead vocal in the chorus. Despite a melancholic, minor tone, the song’s groove and defiant chorus hook of ‘what you say to me?’ turn it into a half-paced head-bopper, making it difficult to avoid absolutely throwing it down as it reaches a crescendo.
The album shows no sign of slowing down as it reaches its halfway point; the next two tracks being the closest representation of straight-up R&B. ‘Where Do We Go’ comes flying out of the traps full of attitude, with a filthy off-beat hip-hop piano progression. Just as you are perfecting your swagger in time to the beat, the stabbing piano chords make way for a much gentler set of piano licks as the verse starts. The chorus is another angelic Ripperton-esque hook, though the dreamy sound contrasts the lyrical subject matter, which was inspired by a racially-motivated incident involving Solange’s grandparents that led them to having to leave their home in New Iberia, Louisiana.
‘F.U.B.U.’ pips ‘Rise’ to being the most empowering anthem on the record. The title is lifted from popular 90s clothing brand FUBU, which is black-owned and whose name stands for For Us, By Us. Solange transfers that motif to the song; it’s for all of the black people who have experienced the discrimination that she details in her lyrics, and it’s by someone who has experienced it too. She uses several examples of the persecution that black people face, just because of their skin colour: ‘when you driving in your tinted car/and you're criminal, just who you are’. The production, which features The-Dream and BJ The Chicago Kid, is akin to the psychedelic soul of Erykah Badu with some sharp TNGHT/Hudson Mohawke-style staccato horns helping to build tension.
The album’s next two tracks call on two of the big dogs from the old school of R&B. Q-Tip provides bass, drums, and vocals to the poppy ‘Borderline (An Ode to Self-Care)’, another song where you hear Solange come close to a Beyoncé-style chorus hook. In ‘Junie’ – a tribute to Funkadelic’s Junie Morrison who died during the making of the album – Andre 3000 drops by for an uncredited appearance, delivering the chorus’ hook and an uplifting piano part befitting of The Love Below-era Outkast, almost lifted straight from the intro of ‘Roses’. It’s oddly out of place because of how much of an unadulterated banger it is; no complaints there.
A Seat at the Table draws to a close with two tracks that hint towards Solange’s future direction. ‘Don’t Wish Me Well’ is another production involving Sampha, leaning much more towards ambient electronica. Solange foreshadows to the success of the album and her new position at the forefront of music over a Temper Trap ‘Sweet Disposition’-style arpeggio; ‘and I'm going all the way/but I'll leave on the lights for you’ and ‘look what remains/pour ashes where they claimed my name/they say I changed/but a pity if I stayed the same’.
‘Scales’, an atmospheric, downbeat song driven by Solange’s vocal melody, closes the album proper, before Master P signs off A Seat at the Table over a regal-like horn section, poetically summarising how their black ancestors came to America and managed to keep ‘the rhythm’, despite the adversity they faced; ‘now we come here as slaves, but we going out as royalty/and able to show that we are truly the chosen ones’.
And… breathe.
A Seat at the Table is executed to perfection. The message is clear, the songs are expertly crafted; they sit together as one cohesive collection. The blend of live instrumentation and electronic parts lets the album feel fresh yet classic. Clearly, it’s not the first time these things have been combined, but Solange oversees the perfect balance; it connects the past that is lamented in her lyrics with the future, looking forward – change is possible.
The album received widespread critical acclaim, featuring on the end of year lists of media outlets from across the musical spectrum. Pitchfork, Spin, and Vibe all named it their best album of 2016, while Noisey put it at top spot on their best album of the 2010s list. Rolling Stone made A Seat at the Table one of the newest entrants on its 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list. Solange won her first Grammy for Best R&B Performance on ‘Cranes in the Sky’.
Like the panic attacks she suffered making True, Solange bore her fragilities on the album; so much so that she told Questlove on Questlove Supreme that she sometimes felt uncomfortable performing the album live, out of context. It makes sense – the idea of touring an extremely personal collection of songs seeped in your family’s history with racial discrimination and the wider context of ongoing racial discrimination in an upbeat, party situation, especially across predominantly white continental Europe, for example. As she says in ‘F.U.B.U.’, in reference to the song’s content being about black experiences, with lyrics that a non-black person shouldn’t sing: ‘don't feel bad if you can't sing along/just be glad you got the whole wide world’. Despite this, her live shows have also been critically acclaimed. They are choreographed theatre as much as they are musical performances; everyone from Solange, her backing singers, and the horn section in the background moving around the stage in unison. Live footage is pretty scarce as Solange is protective of releasing that intellectual property for YouTube consumption, but the videos from her show at the Sydney Opera House are worth a watch. You can already see the influence that her live performances have had on performers that have been around much longer than her; I can’t help but see Solange and her band in former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne’s American Utopia live production.
A Seat at the Table’s influence can be found in other seminal releases of the late 2010s, no more so than Tyler, The Creator’s Igor (my personal Album of the Year 2019). It feels like a companion piece to A Seat at the Table, the male version of an artist stepping up to a new level of creative comfort and control. It shares the spoken word interludes – Solange has Master P and her parents; Tyler’s come from excerpts of a conversation with comedian Jerrod Carmichael. Igor utilises electronic instruments, samples and synthesisers a lot more than A Seat at the Table, but the commonalities crop up throughout; Tyler’s use of rolling arpeggio in ‘Running Out of Time’ or the descending baroque synth notes in ‘A Boy is a Gun’ feel heavily influenced by the sound of A Seat at the Table. Thematically different to A Seat at the Table, Igor is a concept album about a love triangle involving Igor (Tyler), the man he is involved with and another woman. Tyler conceived the concept for Igor idea after a trip to Italy. So who was he in Italy with? Frank Ocean and Solange.
Solange with Tyler in Lake Como, Italy
When I Get Home
The title of Solange’s two most recent albums explain her position in the industry, and her own mind-set, at their time of release. A Seat at the Table was her attempt to be accepted as herself, uncompromisingly in her own skin. She expands on this idea through the album’s lyrics; like in ‘Weary’, when she tells us to ‘be leery about your place in the world’. A Seat at the Table signals Solange’s arrival at the forefront of contemporary music, an album that many probably didn’t expect she was capable of. Its success gave her a literal seat at the top table, Beyoncé’s little sister was now here, she earned it. When I Get Home is the next phase in that journey, signalling her now being comfortable – at home – with herself and her sound, in full control of her creative output.
The album artwork presents the same story. With A Seat at the Table she is photographed from the shoulders up with a bare, natural face, and clips in her hair; her shoulders look stiff and her head straight, looking uncertain of the camera. She recreates the same pose for the cover of When I Get Home, but this time with a slight tilt of the head – showing a sense of belonging, of owning it – wearing elaborate make-up and a facial accessory; she is fully fledged.
Like A Seat at the Table, Solange used extended jam sessions to develop ideas for the album. She brought in new collaborators Christophe Chassol, a classical pianist who previously worked with Frank Ocean, and Jamire Williams, a jazz musician who has recorded with Moses Sumney and Solange’s old friend, Dev Hynes, to make key contributions to the process. The jam sessions became bigger in scale, both in terms of length and in setting. She swapped the rural, rustic settings of Long Island and Louisiana for something more opulent: a house in the hills above Los Angeles with a 360-degree panoramic view of the city. I picture a long, one-floor house with towering high ceilings and 8-foot windows looking over Los Angeles; basic décor with white walls. Chassol described the scene: ‘she rented a house in L.A. but in the hills, very far away, so you could see the whole town in 360 degrees. A crazy house. She had a big carpet, a Fender Rhodes (electric piano), drums’. It sounds like the perfect setting to have day-long jam sessions, easy to get lost in the moment as the Los Angeles sky turns from glorious clear blue day to orange and purple night. It sounds like the sessions were almost meditative, Solange saying that ‘it could be six hours before I hear the one ad-lib or the one thing where I think, OK, that is how I can extend this into an expression of what I want to achieve’.
Despite When I Get Home’s longer jam sessions, the album’s songs are shorter; the record jumps to the next song just as an idea from the previous track is fully introduced. Rather than songs with a traditional verse/chorus, or a combination of different parts, they are short with repetitive motifs and lyrics. It almost feels like a reflection of the popularity of Snapchat or Vine (RIP); the desire to excessively consume ideas and the reality of 4 minutes feeling like a lifetime for the iPhone-addicted young adult.
Although the initial jam sessions only utilised vocals, a Fender Rhodes and drums, the final productions feature far more synthesiser and electronic aspects compared to A Seat at the Table. The album is rife with synth pads and detuned keyboard chords; the productions leaning more towards trap and electronica than the 70s inspirations of A Seat at the Table.
Writing and recording also took place in Jamaica and Louisiana, with the usual busload of collaborators coming through to help contribute to Solange’s next project. While Pharrell returned to co-produce the chopped-and-screwed tribute to Houston, ‘Almeda’, there is less room for the same number of R&B acts as Solange would previously invite to collaborate on her work. Familiar faces Dev Hynes and Sampha appear, as do members of Solange’s touring band. It feels like much more of an in-house affair, much more up-close and personal versus A Seat at the Table. The lyrical themes are more introspective and personal to Solange, with less commentary on the wider racial landscape in America that featured so prominently on A Seat at the Table.
When I Get Home has songs that comfortably stand up against the quality of A Seat at the Table. Solange’s solo productions are even more accomplished; like the detuned, shimmering chords of ‘Way to the Show’ as she delivers a sultry vocal. Hynes and Earl Sweatshirt’s work on ‘Dreams’ comes closest to classic R&B, Solange’s vocal straddling the warm bassline as she croons like a lounge singer reminiscing over her younger days. Tyler, The Creator and Steve Lacy offer a jazzy production on the sexiest track on the album, ‘My Skin My Logo’; you feel like you’re in the room as Solange and Gucci Mane go back and forth, listing one another’s interests – you picture them eye to eye in the studio and can hear them making each other crack up on mic.
And then there is ‘Binz’, a stormer of a track that only needs three thick descending bass notes to be the albums stand out. Co-produced by Panda Bear, the bassline just about manages to stay in time with the choppy hi-hats underneath it; this very gradual movement out of sync adds to the excitement of the song. Solange harmonises with herself before detailing a day living lavishly in her life. After less than two minutes, the song ends abruptly. Criminal.
Whilst not quite as all-conquering as A Seat at the Table, the album is still an expertly crafted collection of lo-fi electronica. When I Get Home swaps the theatre of A Seat at the Table for arresting, immediate synth sounds and basslines, making you feel closer to the record. Sonically, it’s an even bolder exploration of different genres; synth-heavy but also reaching back to old jazz and soul influences, this combination pushing it towards avant-garde abstraction.
Solange continued to combine her studio recordings with other mediums, releasing a 33-minute film to accompany the album and more acclaimed live performances. She was the last artist chosen to perform at the Sydney Opera House before it closed for years of renovations. As of 2021, Solange is again working on new music, having teased new work via an Instagram live the day before Valentine’s Day.
20 years on from her first venture into the music industry, Solange is now recognised as a visionary artist and genre-defying musician. At times it may have looked as though she wasn’t going to achieve success, but it didn’t faze her. She was in control of her journey and did it on her own terms. There was no rush, as she told us on A Seat at the Table; don’t you wait for me.