When I Get Home is Solange's fourth studio album that was released on March 1, 2019 by Columbia Records.
Tracklisting[]
- Things I Imagined 1:59
- S McGregor (Interlude) 0:16
- Down With The Clique 3:42
- Way To The Show 2:55
- Can I Hold The Mic (Interlude) 0:21
- Stay Flo 2:55
- Dreams 2:28
- Nothing Without Intention (Interlude) 0:23
- Almeda (featuring Playboi Carti) 3:56
- Time (Is) (featuring Sampha) 3:39
- My Skin My Logo (featuring Gucci Mane) 2:55
- We Deal With The Freak'n (Interlude) 0:31
- Jerrod 3:02
- Binz 1:51
- Beltway 1:41
- Exit Scott (Interlude) 1:01
- Sound Of Rain 3:05
- Not Screwed! (Interlude) (featuring Standing on the Corner) 0:22
- I'm A Witness 1:51
Album Background[]
Solange Knowles began working on the album in a rented house in her home-town of Houston, Texas after completing a tour in support of her previous album, "A Seat at the Table."
In an October 2018 interview with T: The New York Times Style Magazine, she revealed that a forthcoming album, recorded between New Orleans, Houston, the Topanga Canyon and Jamaica, was near completion.
She said about the album's sound: "There is a lot of jazz at the core... But with electronic and hip-hop drum and bass because I want it to bang and make your trunk rattle."
On February 27, 2019, she released a teaser video on social media, and shared the album's track listing on February 28, 2019. The video references Houston rapper Mike Jones and his well-known cell phone number.
Solange also set up a page on BlackPlanet, a social networking website aimed at African Americans, and shared teaser images for the album on the site.
Chart Performance[]
"When I Get Home" debuted at #7 on the Billboard 200 with 43,000 album-equivalent units (of which 11,000 were pure album sales).
Critical Reception[]
At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, "When I Get Home" received an average score of 89, based on 24 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".
Reviewing the album for AllMusic, Andy Kellman claimed that "From the early moment where Solange makes like a group of harmonizing, sunlit Janet Jacksons, it sounds custom made for a basking joy ride that tops out around 20 m.p.h. and slows just enough to accommodate get-ons and drop-offs for a variable group of companions including a lover. It comes across as both spontaneous and deliberate."
Malvika Padin also praised the album in the review for Clash, declaring that "The album is driven by an assured sense of direction, always aware of where it's going, never losing itself even as it experiments."
In the review for Consequence of Sound, David Sackllah concluded, "Solange's latest mystifies and stuns, leaving you awestruck as she cements her legacy as a true generational voice."
Israel Daramola at Spin wrote that the album "is expertly crafted, curated, and aesthetically dazzling; choreographed, extremely self-serious and self-absorbed; intellectualized, sonically adventurous, but often feels too rehearsed and neat."[25] Kuba Shand-Baptiste at The Independent stated that it "give[s] voice to the endless frustration of being black in the world, to be punished on that basis, and to support the urge we all often feel to push back against it all". She added that "there are melodies slow enough to sink you into a state of tranquility, and beats hard and strong enough to push you to sway and dance while that happens."
Jem Aswad at Variety wrote that "When I Get Home is a challenging and satisfying follow-up to A Seat at the Table, one that will probably baffle some fans but intrigue and engage even more".
Jon Pareles at The New York Times observed, "The black solidarity that was Solange's strongest message on A Seat at the Table is still there in 'Stay Flo' and in 'Almeda,' where she praises 'Black skin, black braids, black waves, black days' and insists, 'These are black-owned things' over rattlesnake drum-machine accents. But most of the album has her musing on more private, domestic matters and looking inward".
The Observer's Kate Mossman wrote that "Solange has made a record that sounds at times like a collection of demos – fleeting impressions of fluid, contemporary soul songs that fizzle out the moment they're laid down, like a Snapchat album. It's in keeping with the increasingly avant-garde nature of R&B production today, which can be heard in everyone from Frank Ocean to Ariana Grande: songs feel like sketches; hooks and choruses matter less; and music is conceived, perhaps, with visuals in mind – in the manner of Beyoncé's "Lemonade". This kind of music demands a lot of the listener – short songs are harder on the attention span than long ones. It's as though Solange is saying: here is a mood, and here is another… but perhaps, with our increasingly insular listening habits, a "mood" is exactly what we want our music to be."