FEATURE:
Vinyl Corner
Solange – A Seat at the Table
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BEFORE the end of the year…
I want to bring a few albums into Vinyl Corner that one can consider among the best of the decade. The 2010s has been an interesting time for music and one that has delivered some amazing albums. Solange delivered When I Get Home earlier this year; it was another critical hit and proved that there is nobody like her in music. Her albums are amazing, and one listens and is awe-struck by her amazing voice and incredible songs. She is one of the greatest artists in our midst, and I hope there are lots of festival bookings for Solange in 2020. Her third studio album, A Seat at the Table, was released on 30th September, 2016, and is surely one of the best albums of this decade. You can buy it on vinyl, and I suggest you do. It is a phenomenal album and one that pushed her music to new heights. Before then, Solange has wowed critics with her albums and E.P.s - Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams was a minor success in 2008 but nobody was quite prepared for the wonder of A Seat at the Table. As far back as 2009, Solange Knowles explained her determination to record an album with the same sort of sound as Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams. Keen to get an album started, she rented a house in Santa Barbara, California where she suffered a breakdown. It was obviously a shock, but perhaps not a surprise given the fact she was working all hours and pouring every ounce into the record.
She suffered panic attacks and was making all sorts of sacrifices. Emotionally, financially and psychologically, Solange was in a bad place. She did release an E.P., True, that was well received. That was released in 2012, and she set up her record label, Saint Records, in 2013. This was her road to recovery and, with a new label set up, she was now setting her sights on a third studio album. Although Solange wrote most of A Seat at the Table’s tracks on her own, thee are quite a few producers in the mix that help give the album its range and various moods. Solange’s tracks are incredible and touch on themes such as race, empowerment and personal heartache. She mixes together genres like Funk and R&B to create this deeply immersive and fascinating album. I think the album resonated so quickly because there is that combination of the personal and universal. Solange addresses race and prejudice in the wider world but, on songs like Cranes in the Sky, Solange sings of her attempts to alleviate her pains. Solange is very open about her loneliness, hurt and struggles, but there is this overarching desire to feel better and find peace. A Seat at the Table is a powerful album that still sounds so astonishing and moving a few years after its release. Reviews for A Seat at the Table were incredibly positive.
Solange’s previous two albums were met with praise, but nothing like the reception that greeted A Seat at the Table. This is what AllMusic had to say:
“Remarkably, tender elegance is the mode for much of the album's duration, as heard in the exquisitely unguarded "Cranes in the Sky" and dimly lit left-of-center pop-R&B hybrids "Don't You Wait" and "Don't Wish Me Well." Those songs crave release and reject character assassination and stasis while hinting at inevitable fallout. Their restrained ornamentation and moderate tempos are perfectly suited for Knowles, an undervalued vocalist who never aims to bring the house down yet fills each note with purposeful emotion. When the rhythms bounce and the melodies brighten, as they do during a short second-half stretch, the material remains rooted in profound grief and mystified irritation. In "Borderline," a chugging machine beat and a lilting piano line form the backdrop of a scene where Knowles and her partner tune out the world for the sake of their sanity. Then, after Nia Andrews and Kelly Rowland's half minute of proud harmonic affirmation, along comes "Junie," a squiggling jam on which André 3000 makes like the track's namesake (Ohio Players and Parliament legend Junie Morrison), where Knowles delivers a sharp metaphorical smackdown of a cultural interloper like it's merely an improvised postscript. All of the guests, from Lil Wayne to Kelela, make necessary appearances. The same goes for Knowles' parents and Master P, who are present in the form of short interludes in which they discuss segregation, self-reliance, cultural theft, and black pride. These segues shrewdly fasten a cathartic yet poised album, one that weighs a ton and levitates”.
This is The Guardian’s reaction to Solange’s breakthrough album:
“There’s a life’s worth of lessons in Solange’s third album, three years in the making. She’s long been engagingly outspoken on issues of race, and from the title down, A Seat at the Table is an intensely personal testament to black experience and culture; the likes of F.U.B.U., Mad, Don’t Touch My Hair and interludes in which her parents talk about their encounters with racism go deep. Sonically, the album’s take on modern psychedelic soul is languid, rich, lifted by airy, Minnie Riperton-esque trills on the gorgeous likes of Cranes in the Sky or the darkly glimmering Don’t Wish Me Well; it’s a world away from 2008’s peppier, poppier Sol-Angel and the Hadley St Dreams or 2012’s indie-crossover-hit True EP. Guest spots from artists as diverse as Lil Wayne, Sampha, Tweet and Kelela only serve to amplify Solange’s fascinating voice. It’s safe to say that though big sis Beyoncé has run her close recently, she’s once more the most intriguing Knowles sibling”.
There is no doubt that A Seat at the Table ranks alongside the best albums of 2016 – to me, one can put it in the running for albums of the decade. It does not matter where you come from and what your background is; the album speaks to everyone and one cannot help but feel moved and struck by A Seat at the Table. It is not just the songs on the album that caught attention.
Like her sister, Beyoncé, Solange can create something masterful and inspiring regarding the visual side. In this article, we learn more about the visual nature of A Seat at the Table:
“This brings us to Solange and her new album A Seat at the Table, which arguably has made the biggest splash in terms of its drop, the visuals and the social message. It is part fashion lookbook, part music album. The context, content and format make you reconsider what a traditional album even is anymore.
Solange’s album has us listening intently, and more importantly, watching also. How could you not? Her choice of music video for her title track from the album “Don’t Touch My Hair” is an ode to blackness and modern black power, intersectionality, and the future of fashion.
Purposefully and gracefully collaborating with Los Angeles-based fashion house Phlemuns, fronted by creative director and founder James Flemons, Solange chose some key looks to bring to the fashion world’s table. While singing lyrics about the modern, multi-faceted identities of black women in America, she rocked a gender-neutral brand created with the purpose, as stated on his website, of “striv[ing] to create clothes that people will want to wear and hold on to forever”. This is a bold statement from a young designer in our current ‘moodboard-to-market-and-repeat’ industry, given the prevalence and domination of fast-fashion. Phlemuns proposes a very different future, a slower and craft-based one, all while serving looks that can compete with the best and biggest fashion houses.
This important collaboration shows that mainstream society is slowly changing: celebrities are no longer left out of contemporary political discourse and are often the ones propelling it forward, bringing once underground movements like Black Lives Matter to the forefront. Given the United States extremely turbulent history of racialised violence, one can’t step onto social media (or the streets) without taking notice of the ever-fluctuating current political context. From the Black Lives Matter movement to mainstream media and music, society is finally starting to notice that something just isn’t right and fashion brands, musicians, and cultural influencers are no longer staying silent on the subjects that matter.
Solange’s lyrics in “Don’t Touch My Hair” address the objectification and perception of black women by mainstream society, while her collaboration with Phlemuns is a statement of her solidarity with young designers, the future of fashion, and a boost up from one black creative to another. If this is the sound of the future (and I truly hope it is), sign me up”.
I am still listening to A Seat at the Table on and off, and I am affected deeply by what I hear. It is a very powerful album and one that I would urge people to buy on vinyl – so you can get that true listening experience. I shall wrap things up shortly but, before I do, I want to bring in an interview Solange gave to NPR. She was the themes addressed, the audience she was trying to reach and her family:
“You know, I guess one thing that I wonder, given what your grandparents went through, given that your father integrated his school and got all kinds of abuse in the process, given that you have experienced acts of racism yourself and now you have a son — do you feel like this is a cycle from generation to generation that is doomed to continue repeating?
I think that while making the album, I actually gave a great deal of thought to how much responsibility I had to express optimism and hope. And ultimately, I decided that me expressing optimism and me expressing hope came from telling the truth — that gave me optimism that I was able to be explicitly honest about my feelings. And for it to have the reception that it's had, and for me to have people share with me that they listen to the album first thing when they wake up to empower them to get through their day and the micro-aggressions that we experience and the healing that, you know, they're expressing that they're feeling — that is the optimism. I think the optimism is in having the conversation and being able to have the conversation now. And people being open to having that conversation”.
“One of the tracks is called "F.U.B.U.," which stands for "For us by us." I read that your working title for the song was "Be Very Afraid." When you talk about choosing optimism over pessimism, "For us by us" versus "Be very afraid" is a pretty stark contrast.
It is, it is. And to be honest, "F.U.B.U." was the song I had the hardest time writing in terms of conceptualizing. Before, that song specifically was about people being afraid of us and fear being at the root of so many murders from policemen, so many murders that we have constantly seen in the past few years. And it was really, really hard for me to put that in a four-minute song. And I kept trying, and I kept trying, and it hurt so much and it was so painful for me and it was so sad. And one day, I put on the track again, probably the fifth or sixth variation of the song, and I swear it just felt like God speaking through me. I wrote it probably in six minutes. And it was just one of those moments where it really did not feel like it was just me.
And that is where I drew "For us by us." Because not only did I mean it, you know, in the obvious way. But it really was written by us. These are incidents that all of my friends go through on a daily basis. These are incidents that, by the way, you know, Oprah and Dr. Dre have expressed that they're going through — and they're billionaires ... And also there's a certain tonality of that song that also speaks to — when you exist as an unafraid and powerful black presence in this country, what happens as a result of that? And kind of the breaking down that people try to do on a daily basis when you present yourself in that way, which is something that I've really struggled with.
I was going to ask whether you thought about who the audience was. This album is obviously from a black perspective, and a black female perspective. But there are some songs, like "F.U.B.U.," that sound like you are singing to an audience of black listeners. And then there are other songs, like "Don't Touch My Hair," which clearly seem directed at a white person.
I think that honestly while writing the record, I was writing for myself, to be honest. I was writing for my family and my friends. I was wanting to be the voice of my group text chat. I was wanting to be the voice of my grandparents. I was wanting to be the voice of my son, my niece. So I think that's really the audience that I was writing from the perspective of. Some songs are received in a certain way, but I honestly was writing them for myself and for my healing and for my self-discovery. On some moments, that can be universal. And then some moments, I feel like that is for us, by us, and we deserve to have that moment”.
I will end things here, but I would encourage people to go out and get A Seat at the Table – maybe stream it if you’d prefer. It is one of the best albums of this decade and one that seems to grow in stature and potency the more you listen to it. Solange recently appeared on The Tonight Show Featuring Jimmy Fallon and wowed viewers and reviewers with an amazing performance of tracks from When I Get Home; promoting some to ask whether it is time to give Solange her own variety show. She is definitely one of the most astonishing artists we have and someone who we should all keep an eye out for (she has a few gigs in January already lined up. Not only is 2016’s A Seat at the Table the moment when Solange truly found her voice; it is unmistakably…
ALL PHOTO CREDITS: Solange
AN instant classic.