“And do you belong? I do.”

The assertion sits atop an essay that Solange Knowles wrote in the waning weeks of summer. In the text that followed, she recounted a painful, much-publicized recent incident: A group of women had pelted her, with words and then trash, as she stood to dance at a Kraftwerk concert in New Orleans. She recalled her resolve to stay positive for the sake of her young son and his friend, also in attendance, and remembered assuming that she must have been imagining their violation: “Certainly a stranger would not have the audacity.” But that charity proved misplaced, and disappointingly familiar: As a woman of color, she had been dismissed, scrutinized, and harassed by strangers in predominantly white spaces before. She knew well the emotional labor of turning the other cheek.

When A Seat at the Table dropped three weeks later, it became clear that the essay’s title pulled from the lyrics of “Weary.” It’s a wistful ballad that explores how, when you’re constantly fighting for the base amount of respect, graciousness can be downright exhausting: “Be leery ’bout your place in the world/You’re feeling like you’re chasing the world/You’re leaving not a trace in the world/But you’re facing the world.” A Seat at the Table is full of similar admissions, delivered with a rare and beautiful empathy. In it, Solange often speaks to the universal experiences of youth (new love, confusion, heartbreak), but does not shy away from her own journey; the specificities of black life are proudly inextricable from her accounts. On “Mad,” she offers a poised reply to a damaging stereotype commonly affixed to black women, flipping accusations that they’re always angry into an uplifting rebuttal: “You got the light, count it all joy!” Floating over Raphael Saadiq’s lush soul arrangements, she travels “70 states” to escape such pressures, turning to sex, alcohol, isolation, and material pursuits on the haunting ballad “Cranes in the Sky”—but the journey leads her back to where she began, looking inward for strength.

A Seat at the Table has a gorgeous sense of flow; ideas of identity commingle easily with social commentary as lithe R&B melts into spoken interludes. The latter happens with a cinematic ease; the interludes sew the album together like plot points of a larger narrative. Solange’s mother, Tina Lawson, makes an impassioned appearance, saying: “It’s such beauty in black people, and it really saddens me when we’re not allowed to express that pride in being black, and that if you do, then it's considered anti-white. No! You’re just pro-black. And that’s okay.” This segues beautifully into the standout track “Don’t Touch My Hair,” a measured stance against the misguided act of reaching for a black person’s crown. Much like the know-how required to care for this hair, which is often passed down by a maternal figure, Lawson’s words offer a glimpse of the love for her heritage that she instilled in her daughter. Other monologues feature Solange’s father recalling the trauma of school integration (“We lived in the threat of death every day”) and an introspective Master P, who crystallizes one of the album’s salient themes: “If you don’t understand my record, you don’t understand me—so this is not for you.”

On her third album, Solange has reclaimed every part of her narrative and has done something undeniably inspiring. In 2016, when it still seems like a radical act to release a record that catalogues the nuances of black womanhood, she has done so with stunning candor. A Seat at the Table is a contemporary take on the protest records of yesteryear, steeped in the tradition of vanguard singers who critiqued society’s ills from the female perspective. It is an offer of solace for anyone working towards their own glory, and for those whose right to dignity is long overdue. –Vanessa Okoth-Obbo

Listen: Solange: “Cranes in the Sky”