Two months later, Solange wrote 'Cranes in the Sky' while listening to the instrumentals in a Miami hotel. One consisted simply of drums, strings, and bass.
In 2008, producer and singer Raphael Saadiq handed Solange a CD with a few instrumentals on it. Solange wrote 'Cranes in the Sky' eight years before the album's release, in the aftermath of her break-up with the father of her child–whom she had been with for five years, since age seventeen.
