By the time Solange Knowles was 21 years old, she had already confronted many of the typical peaks and nadirs of adulthood. She had married and then shortly after divorced her high school sweetheart, delivered her son, Julez, and in the midst of all of this, made the bold decision to change the trajectory of her music career.

This transitional period marked a major turning point in both her personal life and musical career, which she documented in her second studio album Sol-Angel & The Hadley St. Dreams. Looking back at the album 11 years and four projects later, it appears to represent way more than a musical indexing of her life at the time. The 2008 album officially set the tone for what would become of the singer-songwriter’s unhinged and unfiltered sonic, lyrical and artistic aesthetic.

Sol-Angel & The Hadley Street Dreams -- named after a plot of land in downtown Houston where her father once told her he had a dream of building a studio -- is Solange’s first true introduction to the artist she is now. Although it was the singer-songwriters second studio album, following the 2002 release of Solo Star, this album was now mostly driven by Solange’s musical sensibilities. She had just begun embarking on her journey to compose music that was not dictated or created to reflect any of the popular music of the time or the demands of music labels and radio programmers.

- Amira Rasool (i-D UK)