When I Get Home is the fourth studio album by American singer and songwriter Solange, released on March 1, 2019. It is the follow-up to her 2016 album A Seat at the Table and explores Solange's hometown of Houston, Texas.
Solange produced the album alongside a variety of collaborators, including John Key, John Carroll Kirby, Standing on the Corner, Chassol, Jamire Williams, and Pharrell Williams. The album also features contributions from several high-profile musicians, including Sampha, Playboi Carti, Gucci Mane, Panda Bear, Tyler, the Creator, Metro Boomin, The-Dream, Abra, Dev Hynes, Steve Lacy, Earl Sweatshirt, and Scarface.
Background and promotion
Solange began working on the album in a rented house in her hometown of Houston, 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 of its 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, Solange released a teaser video on social media, and shared the album's track listing on February 28. The video references the Houston rapper Mike Jones and his well-known cell phone number. She 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.
Composition
The album blends "cosmic" jazz, hip hop, and R&B, and has also been described as psychedelic soul, "new-age trap", and a "drowsy funk throwdown". It is also influenced by chopped and screwed hip hop originating from Solange's hometown of Houston, as well as drum and bass. The album has been described as an ode to Houston's hip hop scene, and is narrated by a range of sampled African-American women from its Third Ward, where Solange grew up. In writing the album, Solange was inspired by the use of repetition in Stevie Wonder's The Secret Life of Plants as well as music by Steve Reich, Alice Coltrane, and Sun Ra. She also noted that the album was more focused on what she had to "feel", compared to A Seat at the Tables focus on what she had to "say".
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 25 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." 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".