SZA’s Cntrl has sold over 2 million copies worldwide
We already know how dedicated the outstanding lyricist and imaginative musician is to her work. Writing hundreds of songs for what became SOS, culling it to just 23 is, in context, an exercise in restraint.
Posted Jan. 23, 2023
Cub Reporter
I’m certainly not alone in my choice of favorite album. In fact, SZA’s Cntrl has sold over 2 million copies worldwide since its release in 2017. Nearly 5 years later, in 2022, SZA dropped yet another 5-star album SOS.
Like Cntrl, SOS transforms intensely personal observations into gilded songs that feel intimate, relatable, and untouchable, all at once. SZA has mastered the art of the inner monologue, letting her voice weave in, over, and through the beats, in a style that recalls the jazzy structure of Joni Mitchell and the technical prowess of Minnie Riperton.
The album SOS opens with the Morse code distress call and a sample of the Gabriel Hardeman Delegation’s 1976 gospel exhortation “Until I Found the Lord (My Soul Couldn’t Rest),” which leads her into a muscular opus of self-determination, singing in a rap cadence/breath-control flex about how she’s simply over the “fuckshit”. This opening title track sets up a kind of thesis for most of the album: that even amid self-doubt, she’s gloved up, in the ring, a heavyweight champ looking for the belt.
We already know how dedicated the outstanding lyricist and imaginative musician is to her work. Writing hundreds of songs for what became SOS, culling it to just 23 is, in context, an exercise in restraint. At the same time, SOS is a clear document of how extensively SZA sharpened her songwriting since the exquisite CTRL.
On SOS, she belts her face off on an instant classic “f*ck you” number (“I Hate U”) alongside a savage rap track that recalls the glory days of physical mixtapes (“Smokin on my Ex Pack”) and, perhaps improbably, a country song with a pop-punk chorus about revenge sex (“F2F”). This can sometimes land in the mushy middle—“Ghost in the Machine,” she breathlessly anticipated collaboration with Phoebe Bridgers, finds them mirroring each others’ vocal timbres over glitch electronica complete with synthetic harps courtesy of frequent collaborators Rob Bisel and Carter Lang. And “Special,” a track about body dysmorphia, sounds like she was writing from a Swiftian persona, à la her loosie “Joni,” yet comes off a bit pat sandwiched between a compendium of songs where she richly depicts the same sentiment.
Even amid her emotional toil, SZA still stands on her own terms. “I’m too profound to go back and forth/With no average dork.” Maturity looks good on her. It’s that exact level of confidence and pettiness that has engendered such a passion for her music and persona. SZA’s talent is otherworldly, but you just might know someone a little like her, too. It might even be you.