[Album Review] SZA Dives Aggressively Deep as the Ocean for S.O.S.
SZA's long, aggressive, sumptuous new collection hardens her situation as a generational ability, a craftsman who makes an interpretation of her deepest sentiments into permanent minutes.
SZA’s SOS Album Cover Courtesy of Top Dawg Entertainment
SZA has excelled at the internal talk, changing profoundly private perceptions into overlaid tunes that vibe close, engaging, and distant, at the same time. On her striking debut collection, CTRL, she portrayed these logical inconsistencies through chattered tunes that tossed current R&B and pop melody structure through the window, allowing her voice to wind around in, finished, and through the beats, in a style that reviewed the snazzy construction of Joni Mitchell and the specialized ability of Minnie Riperton.
Not having a conventional recipe, it ended up, was a triumphant tack: CTRL was guaranteed triple platinum this August, reflecting the two its proceeded with importance and fans' salivatory distress for a subsequent five years after the fact. Obviously, she's been occupied in the time since, having dropped 16 singles or collabs — including the Oscar-selected Black Panther track "All the Stars," with Kendrick Lamar — a collection of material no matter what anyone else might think, in addition to a little modest bunch of ridiculously acidic recordings like "Good Days" and "Shirt." She had the late spring of 2021 in a strangle hold with the record-breaking cellophane candy that is "Kiss Me More," with Doja Feline. She's shooting a film. She dropped some Crocs. She helped herself to play melodic dishes. Like, damn.
The artwork cover of SOS portrays SZA, a previous sea life science major, roosted on a jumping board encompassed by the dark blue sea, her face pointed thoughtfully at the sky. She was enlivened by a 1997 photo of Princess Diana on Mohamed Al Fayed's yacht required multi week before her demise and said she needed to give proper respect to the "isolation" it conveyed. On SOS, she feels like a superwoman who merits the world one moment, and a burdensome second-stringer forfeiting her prosperity for city workers the following. She balances the millennial Terrible Bitch/Miserable Young lady polarity (story ancient) by filling in the huge close to home space between. The collection opens with the Morse code trouble call and an example of the Gabriel Hardeman Designation's 1976 gospel urging "Until I Found the Lord (My Soul Couldn't Rest)," which lead her into a solid creation of self-assurance, singing in a rap rhythm/breath-control flex about how she's just over the "fuckshit." This initial title track sets up a sort of proposition for a large portion of the collection: that even in the midst of self-question, she's gloved up, in the ring, a heavyweight champ searching for the belt.
We definitely know SZA's commitment to her work is relentless — in the midst of public burdens with her long-lasting record mark TDE and her major-name accomplice RCA, she composed many melodies for what became SOS, so winnowing it to only 23 is, in setting, a practice in limitation. Simultaneously, SOS is an unmistakable report of how broadly SZA has honed her songwriting since the lovely CTRL, how she's turned into a much really demanding lyricist and creative performer. While putting herself immovably in the practice of R&B, she's powerfully nonchalant about sort figures of speech. On SOS, she belts her go head to head on a moment exemplary "fuck you" number ("I Hate U") close by a savage rap track that reviews the brilliance long periods of physical mixtapes ("Smokin on my Ex Pack") and, maybe unrealistically, a down home tune with a pop-punk ensemble about vengeance sex ("F2F"). This can in some cases land in the soft center — "Ghost in the Machine," her energetically expected collab with Phoebe Bridgers, finds them reflecting every others' vocal tones over misfire electronica complete with manufactured harps kindness of successive colleagues Burglarize Bisel and Carter Lang. What's more "Special," a track about body dysmorphia, seems like she was composing from a Swiftian persona, à la her loosie "Joni," yet falls off a piece pat sandwiched between a summary of tunes where she luxuriously portrays a similar feeling.
However, amazing, misfortune to her silly exes. On the hustle stalker children's song "Kill Bill," she stops the tune, “I might kill my ex/Not the best idea,” getting all her haziest considerations on the page with a walking electric bass holding her hand. "Blind" conveys:
“my pussy precedes me,” and, “You still talking ’bout babies/I’m still takin’ a Plan B,”
〰️
“my pussy precedes me,” and, “You still talking ’bout babies/I’m still takin’ a Plan B,” 〰️
on a calming, string-loaded number befitting a water sign. "Nobody Gets Me," another wild acoustic number that summons "Blur Into You" communicated through an AM radio in Nashville, proffers a bodily situation: “You were balls deep/Now we beefin’/And we butt-naked at the MGM, so wasted, screamin’ ‘fuck that.’” She is a truly entertaining lyricist, who likewise exalts her particular visual spot setting (Vegas is especially reviled) and crude articulation of sentiments by giving them space and tune.
While conveying these experiences, SZA is at her generally personal, with a set-up of mid-beat tunes that lift the loping pace with her vocal and close to home elements. She puts herself in the genealogy of exemplary R&B, as on the open-heart number "Gone Girl," a moving separation melody over a warm Rhodes piano that grandstands the immaculateness of her vocal reach. "Far" draws sonically from mid-'80s Janet Jackson and contemplates whether the separation was some unacceptable move, while "Far" discredits that idea while studying the outcome: “I’m far cause I can’t trust nobody,” she basically sobs, convincing you right close by her, pulling for her to get herself from the wreck. Furthermore, on "Snooze," a Babyface-delivered track so established in the works of art that the outro grows dim as opposed to closes, she memorializes the woozy sensation of being enamored prior to sneaking in a pitch-moved addendum: “How you threatening to leave and I’m the main one crying?”
Indeed, even in the midst of her extensive close to home work, SZA actually remains according to her own preferences. SOS closes with a Good old Filthy Knave free-form, which she pulled from old narrative film shot by unbelievable R&B maker Rodney "Darkchild" Jerkins. The example, which wound up in "Goin' Down" on Return to the 36 Chambers, bookends her last message on a collection where she does what she specializes in while exhibiting her complex flexibility. "Care what you like," she rap-sings over a soiled blast bap. “I’m too profound to go back and forth/With no average dork.” Development looks great on her — who among us hasn't chastened herself with a rendition of “damn bitch you so thirsty,” as she articulates on the sufficiently quotable "Shirt"? That accurate melange of certainty and triviality has induced such enthusiasm for her music and persona. SZA's ability is supernatural, yet you could possibly realize somebody similar to her, as well. It could try and be you.
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