Solange has beaten Bon Iver to the top of the US albums chart. The R&B singer’s A Seat at the Table outsold 22, A Million, which was widely tipped to become Bon Iver’s first No 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart.
A Seat at the Table sold 72,000 combined sales and streaming units to earn the top spot, with 46,000 of those straight sales. Bon Iver sold 12,000 more albums but his overall total was 1,000 down on Solange’s.
It marks a great year for Solange, whose third album is a striking, ambitious treatise on black identity that features guest spots from Lil Wayne and Sampha. She relocated to Louisiana while writing it in order to reconnect with her southern roots.
Writing in the Guardian, Michael Cragg said: “Its delicate anger and the measured way it unpacks a host of issues means you want to give it the time it deserves rather than demanding it reveal itself immediately.”
Elsewhere on the US album chart, Drake’s Views retained strong sales at No 3, with the soundtrack to Suicide Squad and Red Hot Chili Peppers’ The Getaway making up the rest of the top five.
