You Fill Many Spaces

Solange “Would’ve Been The One” – Solange has a great, powerful voice, but she’s not Beyonce. They’re in the same genre, and in the same family, but they have very different strengths. Whereas Beyonce is a ultra-capitalist pop super-hero, Solange is a fairly normal girl who can slip easily into the sort of material and emotional niches too delicate for her sister’s cumbersome, supremely confident persona. Solange leans heavily on the post-Mark Ronson soul aesthetic — nearly every track is a glimmering modern simulacrum of Motown magic, whether the music is actually produced by Ronson (only one song on the album, and not one of the best) or she’s singing over a Neptunes track that openly pilfers the room-sound of one of the Supremes’ best-known hits. If Beyonce sang any of these songs, it’d be overkill on par with bringing a hydrogen bomb to a water gun fight, but Solange sells her material with the just the right balance of style and down-to-earth humanity.