A Seat at the Table (2016)

A Seat at the Table is the third studio album by American singer-songwriter Solange. It was released on September 30, 2016, by Saint Records and Columbia Records. During the process of creating the album, Solange released an EP, titled True (2012) and launched her own record label named Saint Records. Writing for the album began as early as 2008, while the recording sessions took place from 2013 to June 2016. Solange enlisted a variety of collaborators including rappers Lil Wayne and Q-Tip; singer-songwriters The-Dream, BJ the Chicago Kid, Kelly Rowland and Tweet; and musicians Sampha, Kelela and David Longstreth.

A Seat at the Table was widely acclaimed by music critics and became Solange's first number-one album on the Billboard 200 in the United States, debuting with 72,000 album-equivalent units. The album's lead single, "Cranes in the Sky", won the Grammy for Best R&B Performance, becoming Solange's first Grammy nomination and win. In 2020, the album was ranked at 312 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list.

Background

In 2009, in an interview with MTV, Solange revealed that she was determining the type of sound for the follow-up to Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams. Solange rented a house in Santa Barbara, California to get into a certain state of mind while writing and making music. In an interview with Vibe on July 7, 2010, Solange said she suffered "a little bit of a breakdown" while recording her new album: "I literally gave up my sanity for a while to do this record. ... We literally were waking up in the morning and just making music all day and all night. ... It just started to wear on me in so many different ways. I started having these crazy panic attacks." Solange explained how she made sacrifices "mentally, emotionally and financially", and continued, "It's more than an album to me. It's a transitional time in my life." While still working on her third studio album, Solange released an EP titled True, for digital download on iTunes November 27, 2012. On May 14, 2013, Solange announced that she had launched her own record label named Saint Records, which she will be using to release her third full-length album and future music projects distributed through Sony.

On May 15, 2015, Solange performed a new song at an HBO-sponsored event. The song, which is titled "Rise" was inspired by police killings in Ferguson and Baltimore and the subsequent protests. The song is the opening track on the album and is a funk song that utilizes synth. The day after the performance, Solange revealed she had written twenty-four songs for her third studio album; the songs were written to piano, with Solange structuring them on her own before finding the producers to finish them. In July 2015, Solange announced that her third studio album was nearly complete, and that she was laying low on the performance side until her new music was complete, however she made an exception performing at the FYF festival. On her thirtieth birthday, she stated that she completed A Seat at the Table, her third studio album (fourth overall) three days before her birthday, on June 21, 2016. On September 27, 2016, Solange announced via her Twitter account: "I am overwhelmed with gratitude & excitement to share this work I've written and created, with you... #ASeatAtTheTable". In a statement, Solange described the new album as "a project on identity, empowerment, independence, grief and healing." Set for release on September 30, she had reportedly been working on the album since 2013.

Recording

In the early days of recording sessions, Solange experimented with different sounds and ideas, which did not feature on the official track listing but did inform her on creating the album's identity, sound, early lyrics and concepts.

The initial conception of the album happened on Long Island and in New Orleans where she began to collaborate on ideas with various artists. Solange stated that during these stages it was just her "singing a melody" or "somebody playing her a synth or bass line that would turn into an hour-long track". Following these sessions, Solange traveled to New Iberia in Louisiana along with the hour long tracks. Solange went there with her engineers and began creating the songs' actual structures, building the sounds, writing the lyrics and creating melodies. Eventually, Solange took these tracks to Los Angeles to collaborate with Raphael Saadiq and Troy Johnson, stating: "When I look back at the beginning stages, I remember the powerful energy that set the tone, and that I'm so grateful followed us everywhere during the creation of this record."