A Seat at the Table Tracklist
A Seat at the Table is Solange’s third studio album, released through her own label Saint Records and Columbia Records.
She announced the album’s release just three days before its due date. In a statement, Solange described the album as “a project on identity, empowerment, independence, grief and healing.” She had reportedly been working on the project since 2013.
Judnick Mayard wrote of the album on Solange’s own website Saint Heron:
A Seat at the Table is every bit as sonically intricate as expected from Solange, centering on her own journey of self-empowerment. In Black culture, the table is the unifier where family comes to talk and share over the bounty of what has been earned that day. Solange extends this seat as an invitation to outsiders to understand the truth of what it is to exist in Black skin and the labors that we take on for survival. The themes that permeate throughout the album – grief, anger, sorrow, power – can relate to anyone, but, here, she uses them to speak directly to Black womanhood and the attacks we face daily. Her story is rooted very much in her own family. With spoken interludes featuring both her mother and father, she displays how hers has always been a Black story; not just by accident but by the love, will, and the teachings of her parents.
Six of the album’s interludes include narration by New Orleans rapper turned mogul Master P. When interviewed by older sister Beyoncé for Interview Magazine, she explained her reasoning for using him:
… I find a lot of similarities in (Master P) and our dad. I remember reading or hearing things about (P) that reminded me so much of Dad growing up. And they also have an incredible amount of love and respect for one another. And I wanted a voice throughout the record that represented empowerment and independence, the voice of someone who never gave in, even when it was easy to lose sight of everything that he built, someone invested in black people, invested in our community and our storytelling, in empowering his people. You and I were raised being told not to take the first thing that came our way, to build our own platforms, our own spaces, if they weren’t available to us. And I think that he is such a powerful example of that.
“A Seat at the Table” Q&A
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What have the artists said about the album?
Solange told Elle:
I did want to create this juxtaposition, politically, of having these very hard, messy conversations but having them stylistically in a way that you can really hear me, and not the yelling, the rage. I wanted to project in my delivery what I was not achieving at all: peace and having a certain lightness and airiness that could maybe help me get closer to having more light and airiness in my life.
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What has the media said about the album?
NPR ranked the record as the #134 greatest album made by a female artist, saying:
Solange’s A Seat at the Table was a gift during an epidemic season of police brutality, its sounds warmly embracing the ears as she spoke directly to black people in mourning. Each lyric was feathered delicately over modern New Orleans jazz compositions, alongside odes to funk, soul, R&B and hip-hop. It built a softness and sincerity that touched in areas that D'Angelo’s Black Messiah and Kendrick’s To Pimp A Butterfly couldn’t get to (through no fault of their own). The album is also a testament to Solange’s ear for arrangements and collaboration: Her choices — ranging from Questlove, Raphael Saadiq, Dev Hynes and Dirty Projectors' Dave Longstreth on the production side and Tweet, Kelela, Moses Sumney, Sampha and BJ The Chicago Kid on the album — make it both a seamless and soothing listen. By including interludes from her parents and Master P, she reflected honor and forced us to peep game. Each song exudes comfort, nuance and an affirmation, especially on ‘Cranes in the Sky,’ which deserves to be the new Black National Anthem. A Seat at the Table is a recent classic, but more importantly, it’s also a solution.
