Solace of You is the fourteenth song off of
Living Colour's second album,
Time's Up. Musically, it reminds me of the music of central and southern
Africa, especially the album version with the backup singer
Derin Young, and
Doug E. Fresh's
mouth percussion. There's an absolutely amazing live version of the song, recorded at
CBGB's, on an Italian release called
Nothingness.
On my first several listens, I always assumed that this is a love song, that the solace the character finds is in said love, which nobody can take away from him. My mother's interpretation is that it is specifically a love song for the character's mother (this is not a reference to the Oedipus Complex). The chorus can be read to signify that desire to reenter the womb, the "ovarian-envy" that is so poorly documented. The backing vocal lines (which are not listed, and are not all in English), seems to back this further. Taking that into consideration, along with the line about knowing yourself, and the matriarchal nature of many African civilizations (remember the musical similarities I mentioned), this aspect of the song could be further interpreted to be about the solace of ancestral lineage. This kind of takes for granted "genetic memories," the existence of which is disputed.