100 Best Albums
- SEP 30, 2016
- 21 Songs
- A Seat at the Table · 2016
- IGOR · 2019
- IGOR · 2019
- A Seat at the Table · 2016
- A Seat at the Table · 2016
- IGOR · 2019
- When I Get Home · 2019
- When I Get Home · 2019
- A Seat at the Table · 2016
- When I Get Home · 2019
Essential Albums
- 100 Best Albums “Fall in your ways so you can wake up and rise,” Solange sings in the introductory track of her third album. The line encapsulates the then 30-year-old artist’s journey, previously most known as Beyoncé Knowles’ little sister, now recognized and respected as a bona fide visionary in her own right. As Destiny’s Child catapulted into superstardom in the early 2000s, a 14-year-old Solange tried her hand at singing and acting. She performed lead vocals on the theme song for Disney’s The Proud Family, and starred in teen and family films including Johnson Family Vacation and Bring It On: All or Nothing. Alongside singing backup vocals for her sister’s mega girl group, the multi-hyphenate Houston native also went on to release pop and dance music under her father’s Music World Entertainment label and Geffen Records in the early- to mid-2000s. Following an eight-year hiatus, Solange returned with A Seat at the Table, matured and more authentic than ever, taking full creative control by way of her talents in storytelling, music, design, and visual spaces. The 21-track set is museum-worthy art that heals, honing in on the Black female experience, inextricable from Solange’s own struggles and triumphs. On cuts like “F.U.B.U.” Solange centers Black empowerment, while elsewhere on “Don’t Wish Me Well,” she pores over personal growing pains and what is left behind. Eight interludes weave her stories together, featuring narration from parents, Mathew and Tina Knowles, and respected hip-hop artist and entrepreneur, Percy “Master P” Miller. Other collaborators include Lil Wayne, Sampha, The-Dream, and Raphael Saadiq, who initially sent Solange the instrumental for what would become "Cranes in the Sky," and went on to produce eight of the album’s tracks. True to Solange’s multitude of creative outlets, A Seat at the Table goes beyond the tracklist, released alongside self-directed visuals that communicate through movement, attire, and theatrics.
Albums
- 2019
- 2019
- 2019
- 2019
Artist Playlists
- The avant-soul artist found the identity that fits her best: herself.
- A proud scholar of R&B's many movements.
- Songs that soundtracked an entire movement for justice.
- Solange’s 'A Seat at the Table' personifies the Black experience.
- Featuring Lil Nas X, Solange and Billie Eilish.
- Kyle Dion joins for an interview and live performance.
- Female legends and pioneers, played back-to-back.
- A full and frank discussion on all things baby-related.
- Olivia Rose, Raye, and Sian Anderson guest.
About Solange
In 2017, Solange staged an intimate and somewhat unprecedented performance at New York City’s Guggenheim Museum. Mixing theater and movement with live reinterpretations of songs from her Grammy-winning album A Seat at the Table, the event featured 30-odd performers, including a horn section and dancers, tracing the building’s iconic spiraled balconies. No phones. All-white dress code. It was ambitious, to say the least. But the event also crystallized something her fans already knew: More than just a musician, Solange—like Kanye West or her sister, Beyoncé—represents an expansion of the roles black artists can play and the spaces they can inhabit, a tearing down of boundaries that might have, until fairly recently, kept performers like her out. Born in 1986 and raised in Houston, Solange started her career in her mid-teens, performing occasionally with her sister’s group, Destiny’s Child (which her father, Mathew Knowles, managed), before making her solo debut with 2002’s Solo Star. After a string of auxiliary projects (including writing work on Beyoncé’s 2006 LP B’Day), she returned with 2008’s Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams, an album that braided Motown-style songwriting with electronic production, bridging retro and contemporary, mainstream and alternative, R&B and indie-rock sensibilities. But it was 2016’s A Seat at the Table that put her into rare air. Expansive, subtle, mellow but defiant, the album became something of an instant classic, a bellwether (alongside work by artists such as Frank Ocean) of R&B as art music, sketching the plight of modern black women in ways that felt both universal and strikingly personal. Her 2019 LP When I Get Home was equally personal, and played like a richly layered love letter to her Houston upbringing. It was accompanied by an experimental (but ambitious) short film, co-directed by visionary filmmaker Terence Nance, that nodded to motifs from her Guggenheim performance.
- HOMETOWN
- Houston, TX, United States
- BORN
- June 24, 1986
- GENRE
- R&B/Soul