Since she was four years ago stepped out of her sister Beyonce's shadow and into people's hearts with 'Losing You', has Solange been one of the urban intelligentsia modern figureheads with its style-conscious dealings with music as well as fashion and art.
Attention has also not diminished in the meantime, where she founded the artist collective Saint Heron and has been married to music video director Allan Ferguson at a large-scale wedding. Not to speak of the hidden recording that showed her assault Adolf Jay Z in an elevator.
Although hype is not quite measure up to Beyonce's' Lemonade 'earlier this year, the attention was nevertheless considerable when she announced her next album as a' project of identity, independence, grief and reconciliation. '
The very title opened up a wealth of interpretations. Was it just a suppository for big sister Beyoncé also to get a slice of the showbiz family Knowles? Commenting on the last year's race riots in American society? Or an attempt to retake Louisiana and especially the city of New Iberia, as her ancestors in his time was almost lynched away from, and where she has lived for most of the recording of the album?
Common to interpretation possibilities is that they - like the songs on the album - revolves around the individual as part of a whole, notwithstanding whether this unity is to understand that relationship, family, majority culture, defining power - or oneself for that matter, as it is played on opener 'Rise': 'walk in your ways, so you can sleep at night / walk in your ways, so you will wake up and rise'.
It is also natural to compare 'A Seat at the Table' with Beyonce 'Lemonade', but there is, if not the world, so a kind of difference between the two releases. How 'Lemonade' was expressive and in some places also explosive, demonstrates Solange a distinguished awareness of its instruments and shows how you can say the same thing in a different way.
Common to all the songs are namely that they all break with the sophisti-pop and new wave template that characterized her latest ep 'True', and instead derive their aesthetics in 90s afrocentriske neo-soul, which Solanges updated version almost seems as radical as it did 20 years ago, where it also challenged the conventional mainstream of American radio stations and music channels.
This applies, for example, 'Madd', there is a subtle commentary on the White America patronizing of its black citizens, as she with a handle in the final choruses have turned from being reactive to being progressive: 'I ran into this girl , I said 'I'm tired of explaining' / man, this shit is draining / but I'm not really allowed to be mad. '
Rather than confirm the critic's fantasy about the black woman as hysterical, her resignation to her strength because she not only disproves the other, but also frees itself from forklaringstvangen. The same applies to the production, which instead of being clothed with the same anger that song really deals with, is subdued and restrained and thus refutes the point.
Opposite is the case turn on 'Where Do We Go From Here' if heavy boom bap-beat is in sharp contrast to Solanges disenchanted vocals and the impotence characterized the theme of ancestral expulsion from New Iberia, but if momentum still inspires the belief that family going to fix it.
Most Beautiful she makes it though the vulnerable 'Cranes In the Sky', with its insistent strings and a metaphor that would be Joni Mitchell worthy, is about how to find back to themselves when one relationship is broken.
After completing listening is all the initially mentioned interpretation remains open, and you can even add one: Instead of thinking only 'A Seat at the Table' as Solanges struggle to fit in, it can also be read as her generous offer to us listeners to share with us her life world and all it implies in terms of feelings, frustrations and reconciliation attempts.