If fashionable R&B have been a Nineties teen melodrama, SZA could be the cool woman with a Trapper Keeper stuffed with receipts on everybody. She’s the queen of revenge fantasy—exes get offed (earlier than being advised in no unsure phrases that their stroke is weak), and poisonous rivals get dragged for enjoyable in her songs, which come off like angsty if enchanting diary entries. Within the video for “Shirt,” the third single off her stellar new album, SZA casually murders folks at a diner whereas crooning, “Really feel the style of resentment/Simmer on my pores and skin.” Remarkably, she makes pettiness and Carrie-level bloodlust sound rattling close to angelic.
The 33-year-old’s sharp register is beautiful—a crazy lilt stuffed with acrobatic twists and turns. She weaves out and in of pockets effortlessly, issuing barbs that land with tense, automatic-stop precision. There’s nothing scatterbrained about her music. However there’s at all times an indirect path to transcendence in a SZA track—significant digressions and spicy asides. Naturally, every little thing is punchy, simple, and exact. And the sacrifice (and labor) is clear from the leap; it’s there within the first few bars of every bop (as evidenced on “Promenade,” which opens with lean vocals, whose managed pathos is palpable). She begins the place many pop stars of her ilk wind up, ultimately, after, like, the eighth track on their fifth album. With none huge hooks, per se, she nonetheless provides you A1 melodies which might be edgy, pristine, and immediately memorable.
SOS., SZA’s long-awaited sophomore album, is much more satisfying than her 2017 debut, CTRL. The songs are looser and extra assured. And the worthy themes—retribution, nostalgia, ego—quantity to essentially the most intimate and juicy self-revelations for the reason that Actual World confessional sales space.
“That ass so fats, it look pure — it’s not!” sneers the artist born Solána Imani Rowe on the title observe. Her outburst is, at coronary heart, self-deprecating. However she makes it sound like a flex over humid gospel wails invoking a salon stuffed with mirthful ladies fanning themselves (from the hair dryers or some scandalous anecdote). It’s essentially the most assured SZA has ever sounded. And when she compares herself to Della Reese whereas solidifying her steeliness, it’s clear she’s cementing her standing—“in case all you hoes forgot.”
Equally, “Kill Invoice” is all rigorous feminist depth. Over eerie chords exuding modish late-Sixties cool, SZA annihilates her foes with a hook so spiteful she in all probability composed it in a yellow-and-black jumpsuit. “I simply killed my ex, not the most effective concept/Killed his girlfriend subsequent, how’d I get right here?” she sings. And also you get the sense she spent the lengthy quarantine plotting whereas binging Tarantino flicks and rebounding from some doomed affair. “I did all of it for love,” SZA insists because the observe spirals into candy chaos. If revenge is a dish finest served chilly, SZA’s merciless admissions loom like poison-spiked push-up pops.
On “Low,” she insists that “these bitches in my enterprise received me out right here selecting violence.” That mentioned, the breezy reduce is principally about conserving issues clandestine; its refrain (which wonders whether or not you’ll be able to “hold it like no person is aware of shit”) all however points a Non-Disclosure Settlement. The decision for silence appears apt: SZA’s boast that “that pussy is feeling like an ideal escape” sounds imminently worthy of some travel-oriented podcast. And the cockiness continues on “Immodest,” the place she focuses on “me time” whereas dismissing her haters.
However SOS.‘s most transferring moments happen on reflective cuts. “Blind,” with its acoustic guitar and wealthy orchestration, finds her claiming that “my previous can’t escape me.” And the temper feels each wondrous and enchanted—ripe for SZA’s wounded, if not ratchet, reminiscences. Additionally, “Gone Woman” teems with contemplative power. Over plush chords, SZA confirms she’s had sufficient: “I would like your contact and your scrutiny/Squeezing too tight, boy, you’re shedding me.” However the lyrics are empowering, whilst they criticize some loser who did her soiled.
The album comprises no missteps, although “Ghost within the Machine,” with its references to robots, appears contrived, like a Black Mirror trope in regards to the AI Artwork Generator. And “Smoking on My Ex Pack” sports activities competent bars by SZA, though its refrain might be the most effective factor about it. Nonetheless, there’s nothing just like the caustic animality of “Shirt,” whose hook sums up every little thing we love about SZA: sass, equivocations, and the unexplained bloodstain. SOS. stands for: Savor Our Sis.
