This Is an Essential Solange Knowles Appreciation Post

From ELLE

Solange Knowles announced that she's dropping a new album at the end of the week and I. Am. Here. For. It!

I don't know what stores will carry it or on what platforms it will stream, so right now I'm just standing in the middle of the street spinning and waiting like Jennifer Love Hewitt in I Know What You Did Last Summer.

Worth it.

I don't care if I have to re-join Tidal. I don't care if I have to resurrect Napster from the dead. I don't care if I have to buy a phonograph like a socialite in the 1900s or a resident of Greenpoint, Brooklyn in the present day. I'll do it. I'll do anything to hear this album.

I am so here for Solange. I'm more than here; I'm present and accounted for. This is serious.

I'm especially here for this back cover, which looks like the blackboard from A Beautiful Mind. How do you read it? Any way you want. That's the power of Solange.

We should all be here for Solange.

First of all, she is the only other person to have occupied the same womb as Beyoncé, and that alone is worth more than your life.

But Solange is her own person, okay? She's out here in these streets giving you fashion icon realness and social justice wokeness for days. She's holding it down for all the little sisters out there. Solange is repping for Judy Winslow and Rudy Huxtable and Stephanie Tanner and Tina Yothers. And, yes, I know that Tina Yothers was the actress's name and not the character's name. That's okay. Solange is repping for Tina Yothers, too.

Who else in your life can give you so much fashion, whether you want it or not? Out here giving you Illuminati Miss Frizzle every damn day.

This look, from New York Fashion Week, is doily goals. You didn't even know you had doily goals, but you do. For when the cutting edge of fashion is found in your grandmother's hope chest. The lewk for that dowager diva in your life.

And this!

Literally three loofas sewn together artfully.

Nothing is better than this.

Except:

This is the most Solange thing that has ever happened. Solange wore this outfit to the Met Gala straight from her audition for the live-action Beauty and the Beast where she was trying out for the role of that weird decorative fruit bowl that your Aunt Therese bought you for your wedding. She knows you didn't register for it. She doesn't care. She has a friend who makes these and they're all the rage in Boca. You'll love it.

Speaking of weddings, have you seen Solange's wedding photos?!

Every time I'm in a wedding party these photos turn me into Kanye West at the VMAs. "Imma let you finish but Solange had the greatest wedding photos of all time." Seriously, by now The Solange should be a universally accepted style of wedding photo.

When I was interviewing photographers for my own wedding I was like "The look we're going for is a relaxed Solange." If the photographer didn't immediately reply "YAS KWEEN" I threw them out of my office. Even if I was in their office.

That's the power of Solange.

Follow R. Eric Thomas on Twitter.

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