I started listening to SZA—born Solána Imani Rowe—about a year ago, and feel embarrassingly late to the game. For the past few years, her star has steadily been on the rise: She’s released a couple of critically acclaimed mixtapes, an EP through Top Dawg Entertainment, and co-written with big-name artists like Rihanna (see the track “Consideration” on 2016’s Anti). And earlier this month, SZA finally dropped her full-length studio debut, Ctrl.
Truthfully, I couldn’t be more pleased with the album if I tried, and I am trying by repeatedly listening while reading the lyrics and singing along. Not one of these 14 gorgeous songs is skip-worthy—they’re all just so easy to listen to. The record’s release was preceded by three stellar singles: “Love Galore” featuring Travis Scott, “Broken Clocks,” and “Drew Barrymore,” which has a brand-spankin’-new music video with a cameo from Drew Barrymore herself.
The track list of Ctrl reads as a series of perfectly ordered and honest confessionals about the singer’s personal life, with phone calls to her mother and grandmother serving as interludes. SZA addresses her insecurities to both her listeners and past lovers while simultaneously—often defiantly—asserting her worth, and it’s not always pretty. On opening track “Supermodel” she gets back at an ex who did her wrong: “Let me tell you a secret/I been secretly banging your homeboy,” she reveals, and later sings, “Leave me lonely for prettier women/You know I need too much attention for shit like that.”
SZA’s insecurity about her appearance is one of the most relatable themes on the album. It comes up on songs like “Garden (Say It Like Dat),” “Drew Barrymore,” and “Normal Girl,” where she feels ashamed for not being prettier, more ladylike, of having a bigger booty. Beyond her rawness on the record, one of the most impressive things about Ctrl is SZA’s instrumental use of her raspy voice. In a high falsetto, she echoes and harmonizes with the album’s background arrangements, while full tones drip and run through all the songs’ remarkably relatable lyrics. But she sings a little differently on each track, switching from sounding like a traditional R&B crooner to an ethereal water siren, and calling to mind Frank Ocean’s heart-wrenching vocals and Rihanna’s hip-hop-infused urban pop.
Along with Travis Scott, other featured artists include SZA’s labelmate Isaiah Rashad on her ’90s-vibed track “The Weekend,” where she seductively dismantles the concept of a sidechick, and rap king Kendrick Lamar on “Doves in the Wind,” a song that characterizes pussy as powerful, “undefeated,” and basically running the game. After Kendrick’s verse—which deserves multiple flame emojis—SZA calls out an undeserving “bum nigga” who tries to trivialize pussy. Then she goes off: “High key, your dick is weak, buddy.” That’s why SZA just wants to “bust it open for the right one.” Again, relatable.
She taps themes of nostalgia, abandonment, and sexuality for this R&B masterpiece, effortlessly weaving together narratives and bending the genre’s limits. There’s also a coming-of-age feeling to the album. On the ’80s-tinged “Prom,” yet another standout, SZA slips into simpler and abbreviated vocals to match the song’s shimmering guitar-pop production, as she pleads with her lover not to take it personal that she doesn’t mature as quickly as him. On one of the more sensual tracks, “Pretty Little Birds,” SZA makes enticing offers and overcommits to an imperfect relationship, even though they’ve “hit the window a few times”: “I wanna be your golden goose/I wanna shave my legs for you/I wanna take all of my hair down and let you lay in it.”
For closing track “20-something”—my personal favorite, and the song I relate to most as a 29-year-old—she sings over acoustic guitar about not being where she imagined she’d be in her 20s, and being thrown by the fall-out of one of her central relationships: “How could it be? Twentysomething?/All alone still, not a thing in my name/Ain’t got nothin’, runnin’ from love/Only know fear.” But the final refrain is hopeful: “Hopin’ my twentysomethings won’t end/Hopin’ to keep the rest of my friends/Prayin’ the twentysomethings don’t kill me.”
The album concludes with an audio clip from SZA’s mother, who talks about choosing goodness/faith (or perhaps love?) in order to take Ctrl of her mindset, even if it’s an illusion. On what’s easily the most euphonious R&B release of 2017 so far, SZA taps into her own flawed humanity and effectively uses it to relate to her audience.