SZA Album Reviews

Solána Imani Rowe was born in St. Louis, Missouri. She grew up with a Christian mother and a Muslim father. She studied marine biology at the University of Delaware, dropping out during her last semester.

SZA created her stage name from the Supreme Alphabet, influenced by the Wu-Tang Clan’s GZA. The last two letters in her name stand for Zig-Zag and Allah, while the first letter S can mean either saviour or sovereign.

Influenced by jazz, hip-hop, and R&B, she despises genre labels – “when you try to label it, you remove the option for it to be limitless. It diminishes the music.” Both of her albums to date are highly acclaimed. SZA is a prolific writer, who only releases the best of her songs to the general public. There’s been a lot of intelligent and expansive R&B in the 21st century – Jamila Woods, Janelle Monae, and Dawn Richard are talented contemporaries – but SZA might have best catalogue of all her contemporaries so far.

A third record, Lana, is scheduled for October 2024. It was originally planned as part of a deluxe version of SOS but it was decided it was strong enough to warrant a separate release.

SZA Album Reviews

Ctrl

2017, 8.5/10
SZA signed to Top Dawg Entertainment in 2013, but it took four years for her debut record to emerge.

CTRL starts edgily. The opener ‘Supermodel’ is sparse, with SZA singing confessional lyrics with a raw voice. ‘Doves in the Wind’ is particularly edgy, with Kendrick Lamar’s guest slot.

The record’s stronger when SZA embraces gorgeous balladry.

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SOS

2022, 9/10
The publishing of end-of-year music lists has become like a nuclear arms race, pushing into early November. I get vindictive pleasure from SZA, an artist who’s both a big deal critically and commercially, releasing an outstanding album on 10 December, effectively obsoleting many premature lists.

It’s lengthy, stretching over an hour with 23 tracks, but it’s excellent. Like Bad Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti, it uses its length to stretch out over other genres – in the case of SOS, it drifts away from SZA’s usual alternative R&B to explore mainstream pop/rock. I enjoy SZA’s introspection here, as her meditations on a breakup provide continuity as the record opens up. Her voice is rich, her lyrics are insightful, and her melodies are robust.

The run of ten songs at the opening is strong and conventional – the advance single ‘Kill Bill’ and the pretty breakup tune ‘Gone Girl’ are both terrific. The record opens up with the silliness of ‘Smoking on my Ex Pack’, before Phoebe Bridgers cameos on ‘Ghost in the Machine’. There’s music here that sounds far removed from SZA’s usual oeuvre – in particular, halfway through the record, the transition to the Avril Lavigne-style guitar rock of ‘F2F’ is jarring, SOS ends strongly – ‘Good Days’ is pretty, while Wu-Tang’s Ol’ Dirty Bastard contributes a posthumous verse to ‘Forgiveless’.

The sprawl of SOS may deter some listeners, but it’s impressively consistent.

10 Best SZA Songs

Gone Girl
Prom
Good Days
Drew Barrymore
F2F