AT A STUDIO in 2016, Dave Longstreth was working by himself on a chord progression, as he usually does when writing for his band, Dirty Projectors. “It’s normally a pretty solitary process,” he says now. But that time, Solange was there, as were Sampha, a British songwriter and producer; Blue, Solange’s engineer; and a bunch of other creative people, all part of what Longstreth calls “the camps,” to make Solange’s 2016 album, A Seat at the Table. “I’d have a melody from her, and would be just harmonizing on it, and she would come over and say, ‘Ooh, I really love this chord and that chord, but this one is too dissonant,’” he recalls. “To be just a spoke on the wheel was a novel experience, and to be thinking…
