Solange Gives A Grown AF Performance At NYC’s Radio City Music Hall [Recap]

Solange celebrates the year anniversary of A Seat at the Table with a 30-piece band, special guest Verdine White, and all the flavors.

“The people who resonate with my work are grown as fuck and are creatives in their own ways,” Solange told the sold-out Radio City Music Hall audience last night with gratitude attitude. “And to have that community means so much to me. There are so many different sides of me: the side that wants to twerk and the side that loves the Sun Ra Arkestra. I’ve been able to exist in all those facets of myself and you guys embrace that. So thank you so much!” And the crowd went wild.

READ: Pre-Order Solange Knowles' 'A Seat at the Table' Limited Edition Vinyl

Last year’s phenomenal A Seat at the Table celebrated its first anniversary of release this past Saturday. Some 367 days later, Solange and a 30-piece band (string section and horns included) knocked New York City dead with two back-to-back shows that prove her third album’s eternal staying power. Raising the curtain with “Rise” and closing with the rousing sing-along “Don’t Touch My Hair,” her positivist, intra-cultural messages resonated even deeper with a multicultural America living through the daily WTF-kery of President Drumpf.

A huge orb sat center-stage (looking like a peach/booty emoji whenever the house lights bathed everything in red), two pyramids flanking both the far left and right, as Solange stalked Radio City in a typically fashionable monochromatic white. In-between songs heavy with A Seat at the Table selections, she joked about being on her period, alternated interpretive dance with sexy twerks, and hit high notes with ease.

😢🙌🏾 @SolangeKnowles just addressed the audience at @RadioCity with a touching message. WE love you Solange! pic.twitter.com/OEYC5M1xCM

— Okayplayer (@okayplayer) October 4, 2017

Bruno Mars played Brooklyn last night, as well, and Solange’s core band of nine players are reminiscent of Mars’s funk-flavored troupe in the sense that they all often move as one—choreography, singing chops and musicianship shared equally between everyone. Hardcore fans were rewarded with choice cuts from her 2002 debut Solo Star (“Crush”), the True EP of 2012 (“Bad Girls”), and 2008’s Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams (“T.O.N.Y.”), albums she rightly insisted on honoring in the wake of her most recent record’s grand achievements. Legendary Earth, Wind & Fire bassist Verdine White guested on “Bad Girls” (he plays bass on the original); Solange praised the 66-year-old vet afterward for teaching her “everything I know.”

READ: Solange Will Host A Benefit Concert For Victims Of Hurricane Harvey

The 6,000-strong crowd—running the gamut of beautiful black women and their dates, Afropunk fashionistas and bearded hipsters—pledged allegiance to Solange by running down all the lyrics during highpoints like “F.U.B.U.” and “Cranes in the Sky,” and shaking bodies down to the ground. The star herself did so much dancing, her personal PA wires shook loose from her outfit more than once (roadies running out from the sidelines to get her jacked back into the matrix).

A Seat at the Table continues its run as a #woke music classic a full year after its release. With a handful of 2017 dates left in Austin, Atlanta, Berkeley and Houston, Solange taking her show on the road isn’t to be missed.

Check out highlights from last night’s epic adventure below:

Miles Marshall Lewis is a popular cultural critic and author. Follow him (and us!) on social media @furthermucker.