Solange

When I Get Home

This surprise-released, self-produced record is a reminder that Solange is an R&B frontrunner in her own right. It’s a celebration of women, black culture and – above all – music.

When I Get Home offers so much to be immersed in ... With the album and accompanying video, Solange emerges a true visionary with a piece of self-discovery that trusts its audience enough to eschew hand-holding and easy answers.

Driven by feelings, mindfulness and a newfound sense of purpose, the avant-garde album takes on an intensified jazz approach filled with sonic repetition, chord progression and freeform collaboration. And despite being light in lyrics, it's heavy in Houston traditions.

A Seat at the Table was an invitation into the woes that weighed heavy on Solange’s heart; When I Get Home is her gesture of consent to enter the warmest depths of her mind.

In essence, When I Get Home is a deeply personal album which ditches the standards of the pop industry in many ways.

Solange's abstract fourth album When I Get Home plays like a dream, but its logic is sound.

Solange’s fourth album is unhurried, ambient, and exploratory. Using everything from spiritual jazz to Gucci Mane, Solange conjures her hometown with exceptional songcraft and production.

Songs play out like mantras, her rawness manifesting as repetition.

Where 2016's A Seat At The Table commanded respect, action and validation to an extent, When I Get Home offers respite, support and hope.

Overall, ‘When I Get Home’ is a triumph, and is the kind of album you put on to reach your calming, safe place, when you get home at the end of a long day.

She offers brief but potent statements; over half the tracks are under three minutes and each one bleeds into the other like watercolors on her canvas.

Compared to A Seat at the Table, the balance of which processed anguish and anger, this is lighter and freer, above all else a luxuriant bliss-out.

With When I Get Home, the end result is a series of songs that feel like similar but still distinct microclimates, built out of samples that appear and vanish without a moment’s notice.

While When I Get Home is a valiant effort and (thankfully) distinctive to mainstream music’s consistently homogenized landscape, it could’ve benefited from less freeform and a little more stability.