Solange: "Stillness is the Move"

The thing that’s dopest about Solange covering the Dirty Projectors is that in the end she hasn’t created some sort of indie-R&B lovechild—it’s that this sounds like fucking D’Angelo, straight up: late-‘90s High Art boom-bap synched over fucking smooth multitracking and, almost incidentally in light of the aesthetic virtuosity on display, it’s a great song!, all hook-y and lyrically interesting and stuff. She’s got her sister’s pipes but the outro here assures us once again that Solange will use her powers for good, not histrionics.

To be fair, though, in addition to all this, “Stillness is the Move” is a subtler unification measure than dragging Big’s Brother to a Grizz show, which probably won’t happen again though because he acted so corny about it afterward. But the thing about Solange at her best (which: this is) is that these twin channels of influence—pop and indie—seem to channel themselves so naturally through her oversized personality, their crossed streams feeling less like a daring business merger than, like, the shit she felt like doing that afternoon. In what has the air of an afternoon toss-off, she hereby negates or at least outdoes the high-budget astrological alignment of Jigga rapping alongside Empire of the Sun or the high-profile WTF of Weezy ripping up a Lady Gaga track or pretty much all of Kid CuDi’s quick, cute little career. If I know Solange, which I do not, I feel like she finds this really funny.

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