Flavorwire

Sunday marks the birthday of Solange Knowles, she who is forever destined to be known to the majority of the general public as Beyoncé’s younger sister. It’s a thankless task having an über-successful sibling, especially if you’re a perfectly respectable artist in your own right. Solange, to her credit, has followed her own path admirably, blazing a career path that’s based around working with an eclectic roster of collaborators and generally not trying to match or outdo her sister. For this reason, we’ve always found her more interesting than Beyoncé, and we got to thinking this week about similar artists, those are arguably more interesting than their famous siblings. Here are our selections.

Solange Knowles

Beyoncé is the globe-bestriding pop colossus, with the power marriage to Jay-Z and the apparently limitless commercial potential. But if like us you’re of the opinion that despite its popularity, her music (whisper it quietly) isn’t all that, you may prefer the work of younger sister Solange, whose records a) have not sold sold bazillions of copies, but b) have nonetheless been consistently more interesting than Beyoncé’s output. She’s worked with a eclectic variety of artists, including Midnight Juggernauts, of Montreal, Chris Taylor of Grizzly Bear, Chromeo — none of which we can see Beyoncé doing in a pink fit, frankly. (Sorry about the mislabeling of the video, by the way — we are well aware that the song is of Montreal featuring Solange, not vice versa.)