Let it be known: SZA is just as much of a work in progress as the next person, but at just 26-years-old, the iHeartRadio On The Verge Artist has already cultivated a strong sense of self and is ready for her truth to be heard. Clad in a ripped Rolling Stones shirt, exposed black bra and oversized pants, the singer's charming smile wouldn't have indicated that she was on the verge of relinquishing four years of confessional perspective on feminity, indecision, and heartbreak in the form of her full-length debut album, Ctrl. And yet, she was just a few days away.
"I feel more anxiety than I've ever felt, more unrest, more dizzy, than I've ever felt in my entire life," the soulstress admitted during a recent visit to iHeartRadio HQ in New York City.
Ahead of the release of the 14-song set, SZA ⏤ the female face for Kendrick Lamar's record label, Top Dawg Entertainment ⏤ stopped by the office to talk about the making of the project, which features her label honcho, Travis Scott, James Fauntleroy, Pharrell and Isaiah Rashad. But, more importantly, it's a collection that hears SZA backing off the spacey production and reverb that once hid her voice and shifting gears into a territory that she hasn't conquered before.
"I guess I just started being my own therapist. Like, [I] wanted therapy really bad, and I just couldn't get any, so I just wrote an album," SZA explained with a hint of hesitation. "I just got really depressed and made a bunch of songs about the way I felt and remembering the way I felt about certain people and certain days."
Even though her songwriting discography boasts brag-worthy bullets from titans like Beyoncé and Rihanna, the woman that stood in front of our cameras offered more humility than pretension. More poise than restraint. Still, SZA's awareness arrived with the notion that she's overcome far more than we'll probably ever know.
Similar to a pack of unfiltered tales from R&B peers like Kehlani and Jhené Aiko, SZA's sense of self was the result of prioritizing her health before anything else. Born as Solána Imani Rowe and raised Orthodox Muslim in Maplewood, New Jersey, it required a holistic approach to tending to her physical, mental and emotional health. After all, her full-time music career was never a lifelong dream of hers. She had an interest in training for the Olympics but flipped the script onto music when she helped her brother, a rapper named Mnhattn, with some vocals. Her next few years seemingly unraveled without professional flaws. In came a meeting with TDE president Terrence "Punch" Henderson and her critically-acclaimed mixtapes until she decided to do better with her own upkeep to perfect that craft that was oh so intertwined with her well-being.
With careful practice to her health, she was able to open up about her experiences through narratives that she had never practiced before. Instead of writing lyrics through figurative or metaphorical lenses, SZA crafted a skillful collection of tracks that tackled her stories head on, a tactic that she explained was and still is part of her learning lessons as a songwriter.
Asked if it was difficult to make that bold transition in wordplay, the buzzed-about singer admitted that she's a work in progress. "I think I'm just learning about songwriting," she said, explaining, "I think everybody moves differently, like how they work with sound and beats. I think for me, I just need to figure out what my writing style was...It's just a different way to tell my truth."
One spin of Ctrl hears SZA offer up those particularly truths as unabashedly as possible. While "Supermodel" hears her crooning about sleeping with a boyfriend's friend after learning of his adulterous ways, the brooding K. Dot-assisted "Doves In The Wind" is an ode to the power of the P. Yep, you read that correctly. The former features a snippet of Redman's "Let's Get Dirty (I Can't Get in da Club)" and interpolations of Busta Rhymes' "Turn Me Up Some." However, the candid honesty from the aforementioned might come as a surprise when she undresses her armor and reveals plausible vulnerability on other cuts.
For example, take the set's lead single "Drew Barrymore," a breezy four-minute track which hears SZA pay homage to the actress' awkward '90s characters in Never Been Kissed and Poison Ivy. Over a sweet melody from The Antydote and Carter Lang, the singer wrestles with being so lonely that she forgets what she's worth. "She's representative of so much honesty and beauty in terms of the characters she plays," she said of using Barrymore as a reference point. "I always connected to the dorkiness, the lostness, the feeling of not belonging."
Elsewhere on the collection, SZA yearns to fit in with the masses on the lush mid-tempo sounds of "Normal Girl." "I feel out of place often, and I kind of wish I could just be a normal girl and feel like I fit in somewhere," she admitted of the track, which she almost excluded from the LP. "I felt like it was what I was trying to say, but in terms of speaking for other people, I wanted to connect to more people, and I wasn't sure if everyone felt the way I felt."
SZA's stance on her identity continues on Ctrl's closing cut "20 Something," a tender acoustic number about the search of belonging in our twenties amidst the tribulations of friendship, romance, and vices. "It makes me sad," she said, pausing for a moment to collect her thoughts. "I always wonder if I'm gonna make it to the end of my twenties, like genuinely. I'm so concerned, but I'm just curious, too. I guess I just wanted to encapsulate this moment."
As unsettling as the concept is, it's insight that hits hard and fast, particularly to the 60,000 of her followers who purchased the LP in its debut week, placing it at the No. 3 position on the Billboard 200 Albums chart and as the crowning champ on Billboard’s R&B Albums chart. If that's any indication, Ctrl seems like just the beginning of things.
Photo: Rachel Kaplan for iHeartRadio