FEATURE:
Stay Flo
Solange’s When I Get Home at Five
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WITHOUT doubt….
one of the best albums of 2019, I wanted to mark the upcoming fifth anniversary of Solange’s When I Get Home. The follow-up to her 2016 debut, A Seat at the Table, it is a phenomenal album that remains her most current. We all hope that Solange gifts the world with a third studio album soon enough. I will come to some reviews for the astonishing When I Get Home. Reaching number seven in the U.S. and eighteen in the U.K., Solange’s When I Get Home was a commercial and critical success. Let’s start off with a Pitchfork feature from 2019. It reacted to a film screening of When I Get Home:
“Tonight in Houston, Solange hosted “album experience” events across Houston for her new album When I Get Home. The event, which streamed live on Apple Music and her BlackPlanet website, began with a screening of the Solange-directed When I Get Home film and ended with a conversation between Solange and writer/art curator Antwaun Sargent.
The new album features contributions from Panda Bear, Blood Orange, Cassie, Earl Sweatshirt, and others. During the conversation, Sargent asked Solange about her process of incorporating collaborators. “Editing is just such a huge part of my process,” she said. “I would say that it’s 80% editing, and for some reason, I just have the discipline for it.”
She also discussed the process of giving collaborators the freedom to create on their own terms before deciding how to incorporate their contributions in the final product. “The best for me is to invite people into the space and say ‘do you.’ 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.’”
She emphasized her role as the album’s producer, calling producing “my heart and soul.” “Speaking my truth, it is rather difficult as a producer to be reduced to just the songwriter or just the artist when you spend 18 hours editing one drum sound,” she said. “We’ve come a long way from that for women, but it’s still got a little ways to go—the way we’re able to have that conversation about Rick Rubin but we’re not extending that conversation to others.”
When asked about the process of writing the new album, Solange revealed some musical inspirations she turned to at the time, including Stevie Wonder (and specifically his album The Secret Life of Plants), Steve Reich, Alice Coltrane, and Sun Ra—music that emphasized repetition.
She also discussed the difference between When I Get Home and her previous album, 2016’s A Seat at the Table. “Obviously with A Seat at the Table I had so much to say,” she said. “With this album I had so much to feel. Words would have been reductive to what I needed to feel and express. It’s in the sonics for me.”
At the beginning of the talk, Solange revealed that she quietly rented a house in Houston to begin work on new music. “I think after touring the last record, there were a lot of things that were happening to my spirit—things that feel sort of out of control,” she said.
Later, she discussed Texas’ influence on the When I Get Home film. “I knew about a year and a half ago, it would be really really important to me to tell a story about black cowboys.” She added, “I feel so privileged to meet so many of these cowboys and hear their stories and see them pray before they go in the bull ring and see what they’re willing to do to their bodies for the sake of entertainment, which is something I can relate to.”
She finished by addressing the feeling of being home in Houston for the album’s rollout. “It’s just joy everywhere,” she said. “It just feels good. That’s what home does for you. I could be anywhere in the world, but nothing is gonna make me feel like this place does”.
I want to stay with the visual and cinematic aspect of When I Get Home. In collaboration with WeTranfer, there were these incredible and extended screenings of When I Get Home at institutions across the world. The reaction from those watching the screening was powerful. This article explained more:
“It’s essential for museums to recognize the important cultural contributions of artists across disciplines, beyond static artwork that hangs on walls,” says Lauren Argentina Zelaya, the Director of Public Programs at Brooklyn Museum where the film screened last week.“Institutions need to include music, film and video that reflects the contemporary society we live in, and to showcase art and creativity that reflects the lived experiences of people who do not historically feel welcome in museum’s spaces.”
It’s a truth that When I Get Home speaks to, the reassurance and justification of your own identity in a time when the fundamental idea of belonging has been called into question. Peeling off its layers further, we speak to Solange to delve into the core messages at the heart of When I Get Home, and find out how her roots taught her more than any history book ever could.
When I Get Home is about identity and self expression, what do feel you’ve learnt about yourself through the process of creating it?
I’ve been telling a story about a really pivotal moment in my life when I was around ten years old that left an explosive impact on me. I went to a church summer camp in Houston and it was my first time experiencing what I would call the spirit - however you feel closest to interpreting that - and, because I really did not know how to unpack it all, it scared the hell out of me. I struggled with confronting that force for so long, this idea of an energy so strong it could transform your tongue or cause you to faint or shout and dance in ways that were out of your body. I would just want to run from it.
The film is really about standing still in that unknown, and feeling solitude and sanity in the silence of it all. The reckoning of what I may hear and see if I did in fact silence all those parts of myself and if I could really live with, and swallow, the truths that come up. For me personally, it speaks a lot about reimagining the infinite possibilities of darkness, and changing the way we experience that vastness of space. I got to sit with Scarface while I was making this album and he said some really powerful shit to me about his constant need and attraction to darkness, and I realized in that moment how much we have been taught to only rely on light as a guiding force for healing and rebirth. I wasn’t leaning into the possibilities of darkness out of fear, but even from a filming perspective leaning into the vastness that blackness creates was so expansive for my process.
All of these conversations for me have been grounded in evolution. Thinking that you know the way and then having gone through something completely out of my control - which for me at the time was my health - and coming up with new ways of experiencing and coping with the world. For me rebirth always starts at the beginning, which was coming home.
Growing up in my mother’s hair salon constantly reinforced that I never had to subscribe to this one dimensional version of myself.
PHOTO CREDIT: Saint Records/Columbia
Home and the idea of belonging are integral to the film. What does this notion of ‘home’ mean to your creativity?
I started touring at 13 which often made me feel this overwhelming sense of longing for home. Even when I was actually home sometimes in the physical sense of dwelling, I still felt like I wasn’t home in my body and my spirit, and returning to Houston started to answer a lot of these questions for me. I still have a real issue with sitting my ass down in one space, but I recognized how much of me was grounded in the city and how there are parts of me that are just so damn Houston that I feel really proud of.
Starting to unpack what it really meant to grow up in a neighborhood like Third Ward and being able to say the phenomenal Debbie Allen and Phylicia Rashad are from there, or Devin the Dude, who informed so much of my young adulthood, lives in Third Ward, or Pat Parker, a brilliant poet who was also activating in really incredible revolutionary ways is from Third Ward is powerful. I feel really proud, and honestly honored to have been able to invite them into the fabric and the storytelling of this album because those are the moments that express things I could never fully articulate about myself.
Discovering that video of Debbie and Phylicia singing to their mom, and starting off with “I boarded a train, kissed all goodbye” instantly felt like home, in the sense of both leaving and returning, and so to be able to sample that was incredible.
And sampling Pat Parker’s poem “Poem to Ann” is for me about creating connectivity to the work that she’s done but also saying this is all in the lineage of where I’m from and who I am. Or being able to say that I witnessed hundreds of cowboys trail riding from Texas to Louisiana on any given weekend at the Zydeco playing the accordion and line dancing with pride. That informed my vantage point of Western culture long before my dusty American history book could ever. Things like the innovation of Screw and how transformative it was for me to put on a Swishahouse ‘Fuck Action’ tape to do my homework to, and I swear that pace and frequency has impacted the entire wavelength I operate from! I’m like, ‘everybody need to slow the fuck down!’
I was also so honored to have worked with other insanely talented filmmakers and artists from Texas on this project who could really translate the spirit of all that into the film; Terrance Nance who directed the piece for ‘Dreams’ and Autumn Knight whose piece ‘Directions to Prairie View’ is a historical black college in Texas I used in the video for ‘Beltway’. Robert Pruitt, who’s also from Houston, lent his work and that resonates with me so deeply. I feel forever grateful to have had such phenomenal hands touch this project and help me reach places I couldn’t have reached on my own.
Speaking of the powerful education you received growing up in Third Ward, what did being amongst women of the black community there teach you about beauty, and how you see yourself?
Man, it’s taught me everything really! I can’t even put into words how grateful I am for the experiences I had growing up in my neighborhood, in my community of women, and I never ever take that shit for granted. I mean, growing up in my mother’s hair salon constantly reinforced that I never had to subscribe to this one dimensional version of myself because I got to bear witness to so many bomb ass incredible black women all on their own personal walks and journeys figuring this shit out. There were parts of all of them I wanted to reflect in my own existence. I got to see and hear their stories in a space where they felt safe, cared for and radiant, and could unapologetically celebrate their beauty and transformation. I got to go to the Ensemble Theater and have teachers who looked like me encourage me to write out my little itty bitty feelings, and then teach me how those little bitty thoughts could be transcribed into something they called a monologue, which back then was mind blowing for me - that expansive allowance of thinking. I simply would not even be close to the woman I am without those experiences.
And who are the female artists and creatives that are leading the way and inspiring your practice now?
That list could go on forever! We out here! I’m a big fan of Megan Thee Stallion and Tierra Whack and all the innovative energy and damn skill that they are bringing to the music space. Then there’s Jenn Nkiru and Frances Bodomo. All of the conversations and visual languages they are establishing through filmmaking have had an impact on me. My girl Kelela is really shining and killing things both musically and visually and I’m so excited to see all the places she’s going to continue to take us. And Syd is a wonder! I’m so lucky to have a tribe of incredible friends who are all killing it in their own practices of film and art.
Then there’s also Melina Matsoukas, Armina Mussa and Toyin Odutola. Lynette Yiadom leaves me speechless every time I experience her work and is a huge source of inspiration. Kilo Kish is also doing really incredible things through different expressions of mediums and artwork. Karon Davis’ sculpture always blows my mind. Honestly, I could go on and on and on! The list is endless. It’s such a pop’n ass time for boundless expression and I’m really excited to witness all of it.
Where do you plan to take your art, it’s now such an integral part of your musicality and your career?
I think the thing I feel the most is just an abundance of gratitude that I’ve been able to have and be a part of a community of people who support my work as it evolves and activates in so many different spaces and mediums. These are people who nurture that and inspire me to keep creating and give me an even greater understanding of the work I’ve created to this point. People who haven’t told me to shut the fuck up for being really annoying when I’ve said I can’t say this through music, or even dance, I need to say this through sculpture or architecture. I’m really interested in expanding on more tactile practices and exploring all of the ways in which new materials can help articulate parts of me I am yet to really dive into. I’m getting to know my body more and more every damn day and that includes all the ways I want to continue to explore my physical self through new work. I’m also feeling really excited about the future of creating new pieces and musical arrangements to present in a more philharmonic space with larger ensembles and combining that with more theatrical interpretations of my performance”.
I will come to reviews now. Pitchfork were among those to show plenty of love and respect to Solange’s When I Get Home. As A Seat at the Table was so regarded and successful, there was a sense of expectation on an album that followed three years later. I know that many are asking whether there is going to be new music from the amazing Solange:
“In a T Magazine interview with Solange published last fall, writer Ayana Mathis described the making of the new album as taking the singer back to “a kind of Houston of the mind.” It’s a city that figures heavily in Knowles family mythology as the birthplace of Solange and her sister. At the time of the interview, we didn’t know the name of the record, When I Get Home, which indicates that this is an album about return. Now we have music and an accompanying short film that reconstructs the Houston of Solange’s mind.
It’s not literal objectification of the past so much as a future memory of the city, an ephemeral mental grid. See-sawing bass booms from phantom slabs, wood-grained and candy-painted per local tradition. Synthesizers and samples ricochet off the tall, empty office buildings of downtown Houston, reverberating to the heavens. Black cowboys gallop through the dusk—the clip of hooves a drumbeat. Space refuse is treasure. And snatches of vocals from hometown rappers Devin the Dude and Scarface float like murmurs from passing car windows.
Three years after releasing the soul-baring opus A Seat at the Table, Solange has ditched traditional song structure and world-weary lyrics for a sonically and thematically ambiguous record that feels freer, and less burdened by the white gaze. Although Houston is the beating heart at its core, much like New Orleans pulsed through A Seat, the music’s spectral, free-associative quality suggests that the idea of “home” is less rooted. Solange offers a fundamental lesson of those who leave: Home isn’t something you can possess, it lives on without you. Perhaps she also understands that we can’t trust our memories and so Solange gives her music motion. We slide into this “Houston of the mind,” on a repeated refrain that reinforces the slipperiness of recall: “I saw things… I imagined/Things… I imagined.”
The music is so in motion it’s hard to pin down. Its obliqueness does not give it automatic significance; instead, like in jazz or drone music, engaged listening instigates feeling. Because Solange doesn’t offer a clear thesis like on A Seat at the Table, the onus falls on the listener to get close and make their own meaning. That can be a liberating creative impulse, particularly for a pop star who is widely considered an auteur. Solange and her musical collaborators—for what it’s worth, nearly all men aside from Abra and Cassie—duck and weave through various time signatures, burying Easter Eggs beneath bold keys, Moog magic, and textured drum lines that embellish the omnipresent low end. There are samples, background vocals, and additional personnel credits to people representing Houston’s past, present, and future: from Phylicia Rashad and the poet Pat Parker, to Solange’s young son Julez Smith II, who has a production credit on the interlude “Nothing Without Intention.”
When I Get Home is exploratory, but still kind of glossy. The melodies on “Down With the Clique” and “Way to the Show” could be rearranged remnants from her first album Solo Star, released in her teen pop days. Pharrell, the king of sheen, shows up with his signature four-count intro on “Sound of Rain,” a song that perfectly channels the kitschy, pixelated optimism of late ’90s/early aughts futurism. He also brings his toolkit staples of tightly wound drums and syncopated piano for “Almeda,” an early fan-favorite because of an unexpected feature by a baby-voiced Playboi Carti who raps about diamonds shining through the darkness on a track where Solange heralds Black ownership. We’re in Houston, so only one track hints at the time Solange recently spent in Jamaica. “Binz” is a wall-slapper, waist-winder, booty-popper. The airy three-part harmonies that have been her true calling card since covering the Dirty Projectors’ “Stillness Is the Move” ascend over a dense arpeggiated bassline, and then give way to playful back-and-forth toasting between Solange and The-Dream that echoes the incantations of Sister Nancy: “Sundown, wind chimes/I just wanna wake up on C.P. time.”
Solange is frolicking here, using a freeform template that aspires to the endlessly uplifting magic of Stevie Wonder, the psychedelic pleasures of chopped and screwed music, or the spiritual jazz of Alice Coltrane and the Arkestra of Sun Ra. One of her chief collaborators throughout is John Carroll Kirby, whose solo music could only be described as New Age. Standing on the Corner, a young New York City jazz group, provide some sublime moments of drama and tension—a perfect template for the gestural, post-modern, Kate Bush–esque choreography that Solange prefers.
When I Get Home is particularly beautiful as an ambient piece that’s unencumbered by the emotional catharsis of A Seat at the Table—but it is missing a palpable thesis statement. Fourteen of the album’s 19 tracks clock in at under three minutes, but the patchwork effect suggests a more stream-of-consciousness bricolage than, say, Tierra Whack’s idea-led brevity. She’s got a lot of ideas, but I’m still left wondering what this album can tell us about her aesthetic practice. (Despite its title, the interlude “Nothing Without Intention” doesn’t provide a clue.) But this need for direction only matters because A Seat at the Table felt so urgent.
Here, Solange is unhurried. The album rewards repetition, in listening and in execution. Repetition can cue a meditative state; it can also be code. “I saw things I imagined, things I imagined,” she sings on the opener. “We were down with you, down with you,” she continues on “Down With the Clique.” And by the time she switches up the single phrase repetition on “Almeda,” listing with pride, “Brown skin, Brown face, Black skin, Black braids,” the album is half over and the mood, the dream state, resets.
Some spiritual traditions use repeated mantras or prayers to invite awareness and presence, others as a way to invoke the past or alter the future. Design principles teach that repetition communicates unity and cohesion—enter “My Skin My Logo,” where Solange trades admiring verses with a cooing Gucci Mane, whose name conjures an endless monogram of interlocking Gs. The song itself is childlike and loving; the macho rapper softening his nursery rhyme-flow for something that sounds like an actual nursery rhyme. It’s through repetition that Solange resurrects a timeless, formless Houston of her mind. She uses the device extensively and almost compulsively, trying to remember, trying harder not to forget, and trying even harder to situate these traditions within a wider context of Black music and culture in America”.
Before rounding off with news around new music, I want to introduce NME’s five-star assessment of 2019’s When I Get Home. Turning five on 1st March, I think it is important to revisit this incredible album. One that is not played and shared as much as it should be:
“On the February 28, Solange announced the surprise release of her follow-up to the stunning 2016 album ‘A Seat At The Table’. The frenzy that erupted was colossal, and rightfully so, as she released a record that confirmed her already established greatness.
Each of the 19 tracks on ‘When I Get Home’ is magical. The opening intro consists of minimal piano with the repeated phrase, ‘Things I imagined”; this simplicity runs throughout the whole album, as airy beats, like pillowy clouds, elevate the listener. The tactical use of repetition is used to place the listener where she wants them to be; right up there with her – there’s a real sense of intimacy throughout the record.
‘Binz’, for instance, has a 46 second intro of a repeated drum sequence and bass guitar. She gives us up-tempo and groovy vibes, and we can’t help but bask in the song, yet she strips this away with the vulnerable ‘Beltway’. This is where Solange lets the fun and playful side of ‘When I Get Home’ melt into something more unguarded and raw. Here she displays a powerful ability to manipulate her audience – though you’ll be more than happy to go with her.
In addition, ‘When I Get Home’ is a celebration. A celebration of females. A celebration of black culture. But mostly a celebration of music. With exceptional – and somewhat unexpected – features (Gucci Mane, ’90s rapper Scarface), Solange’s blended approach to R&B is nothing short of breathtaking. The ninth track, “Almeda”, boasts a universal hook, while Playboi Carti’s staccato ad-lib “what”, intertwined with Solange’s lullaby-like vocals, is spectacular, and tips the song into a masterpiece. The song’s celebration of blackness runs through Solange’s lyrics (“Brown skin, brown braids / Black faith still can’t be washed away”). The lighthearted feeling of track uplifts the powerful words.
In dropping her self-produced record without fanfare, she’s showed us the magnitude that women can achieve on their own. And then there are the lyrics. ‘We deal with freak’n’ is a spoken word skit about encouraging women to see their self worth (“Do you realise how magnificent you are?… We are walking embodiments of God’s consciousness”). Solange is using her platform to say: “We are unbreakable”, and she can’t be commended highly enough for that.
‘When I Get Home’ reminds us that she’s a frontrunner of R&B in her own right. With soothing production, enveloped with numbing vocals, she leaves you in a state of utopia. This surprise album of 2019 was something we didn’t know we needed”.
On the subject of new music, Solange discussed her plans and current activities in an interview with Harper’s Bazaar. Ahead of the fifth anniversary of When I Get Home, there is a lot of speculation around a third album. I know that we will get new music from Solange soon enough. It is understandable there is a lot of excitement and demand given the power and quality of her first two albums:
“Solange knows her fans are eager to hear new music from her, but she’s still marching to the beat of her own drum—or in this case, tuba.
In an interview for Harper’s Bazaar’s March 2024 cover story, the superstar opens up about finding her latest musical obsession in the brass instrument.
“I love it,” she says. “I’ve started writing music for the tuba, and I am trying to talk myself into releasing it, but I can only imagine the eye rolls from people being like, ‘This bitch hasn’t made an album.’ ”
The last time the artist released a musical project, it was in 2019’s When I Get Home, her fourth studio album, which featured contributions from Pharrell Williams, Steve Lacy, Dev Hynes, Playboi Carti, and Tyler, the Creator.
Explaining her love for the tuba, Solange says, “It sounds like what the gut feels like to me. … There’s a way that it takes up space that you can’t deny, and it also just feels very Black to me.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Larissa Hofmann
On working with her on When I Get Home, Tyler, the Creator tells Bazaar, “It’s such a pure feeling that she’s really tapped into. … I think that’s why I liked her, because [her art] wasn’t based on chasing any zeitgeist, whether it was something political or like, yeah, I’m down like a fucking undercover cop. She’s not an undercover cop. She’s just her, and she makes whatever she wants. I feel like 80 percent of artists with these opportunities to put something out don’t do that, because they’re chasing numbers. She got daughters … like, it’s a lot of them out there that’s not citing her.”
Solange also reflected on the album that preceded When I Get Home, 2016’s A Seat at the Table, widely considered her artistic breakthrough.
As she explains, “A Seat at the Table, and the work that went into it, was all about origin: finding the way that history was generationally repeating itself or evolving and all of the ways that I found those stories within me”.
On 1st March, the wonderful When I Get Home turns five. Such a wonderful and moving listening experience, go and check it out if you have not done in a while. I wonder whether Solange will react to the fifth anniversary or say anything. One of the best albums of the last decade, When I Get Home showed that Solange was in a league of her own. A singular artist creating some of the most important music around. All eyes will be on her when it comes to…
WHAT comes next.