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SZA’s 2017 album “Ctrl” began with her mother speaking to how she believed the control one has in life is directly related to their mortality. For the rest of the 14-song project, SZA reflected on all the trials and tribulations of her past relationships, and her journey through understanding herself to prolong her inevitable death. The album concluded with another message from her mother, who said that having control itself is “an illusion,” something one must prescribe to if they want to move forward in life.

It would be safe to assume that SZA would’ve been content with this realization, ready to move forward from past experiences. But her latest project, “SOS,” starts with a Morse code distress signal, leading into a sample harmonizing the phrase “last night I cried” before she decrees “I just want what’s mine.” This could be alluding to wanting closure from her toxic exes, or to be let go from the hostile ownership of Top Dawg records. SZA details the feeling of wanting to get over her own insecurities in the 23 track album that was released on Dec. 9.

SZA is angrier than she was five years ago. The meaning of her third studio album is precisely charted in the opening track, foreshadowing what listeners can expect from the project. SZA doesn’t care about control anymore. She’s simply done with the “f*ck-sh*t,” unafraid to call out those who’ve wronged her, unafraid to try new things sonically and lyrically.

A gunshot at the end of “SOS” transitions into the murderous ploy outlined in “Kill Bill” where SZA sings “if I can’t have you, no one should.” This song resembles previous SZA songs like “Drew Barrymore,” with a catchy chorus to move along the narrative of the track. But SZA starts to take chances after this with the three-song stretch of “Low,” “Love Language” and “Blind.”

Travis Scott is present on “Low” through ad libs on the entire track, adding another layer to SZA’s flow. This beat is something that Scott would have dominated by himself, but SZA is able to match the tone of the dark, snappy production with her delivery. “Love Language,” a somber track where she details her inability to connect with a toxic love interest, begins like a normal SZA track — a catchy chorus layered onto a undulating R&B beat — before an orchestral finish. She even samples herself at the end of this song with a snippet “Hit Different,” a single she released in 2020.

“Blind” is one of the most personal songs on the project, continuing the acoustic, strings-based production while SZA raps about purposely dismissing any ounce of self-love. She touches on her insecurities later in the album on the song “Special,” referring to herself as a loser and how jealousy forced her to change herself.

The biggest swing SZA took was definitely on “F2F,” a punk-pop song about sleeping with someone else to get back at another ex. It’s debatable whether this is a 400-foot home run or an easy pop fly, but SZA properly recreates the vibe of a typical teenage angst song from the early 2000s.

Scott has slowly made his return to the mainstream with a few singles and features on Metro Boomin’s album, but his verse on SZA’s “Open Arms” is one of the highlights of the entire record and arguably his best verse recently. SZA and Scott displayed the marriage of their styles on “Love Galore,” but their work on “SOS” is potentially the better collaboration, capturing the devotion one has for a love interest before they’re forced to let them go.

While Phoebe Bridgers’ addition isn’t as strong as Scott’s, Don Toliver adds a strong feature to the album on the track “Used.” Another notable feature comes from Ol’ Dirty Bastard, known for the track “Shimmy Shimmy Ya,” which is sampled on the last song of “SOS.” This 90s inspired rap beat is the unorthodox, yet perfect, conclusion to the record, with the line “it’s all love” as the final message.

Best track: “Kill Bill”

This is definitely the most basic pick, but sometimes you just need to shut up and play the hits. “Kill Bill” is the only song on the album that wasn’t a single with over 30 million listens already, and for good reason.

“Kill Bill” contains the perfect arc to a story, inspired by Quentin Tarantino’s 2003 film “Kill Bill,” where Uma Thurman goes on a killing spree in a yellow jumpsuit, triumphantly concluding with the murder of her ex. The song begins with SZA ironically rapping “I’m so mature, I got me a therapist to tell me there’s other men” before admitting she only wants one in particular. The chorus explains the crux of Tarantino’s movie perfectly with SZA singing “I might kill my ex, I still love him, though.”

But there’s a shift in the final hook to end the track as SZA’s hatred for her ex and her ex’s new love interest evolves into her “killing” them both. SZA concludes this journey through her jealous and intense feelings with the sinical, yet comedic line stating she would “rather be in hell than alone.” All of this takes place over an airy, happy beat, adding even more to the irony.

One Skip: “Ghost in the Machine” (ft. Phoebe Bridgers)

There’s a lot of overlap between the ideas which SZA puts out on each of the tracks she has on her own, but it’s hard to deem any specific one unnecessary to the project. The features, on the other hand, are easier to nitpick.

Toliver and Scott’s additions to the album make sense as other R&B/hip-hop artists who have enough similarity to SZA to make for an immaculate collaboration. Bridgers poses more of a challenge with the bending of genres, making her feature on “Ghost in the Machine” feeling more forced than anything.

The lyrics themselves serve the name of the song, but it’s confusing why SZA randomly starts commenting on the digital society we live in after 10 songs pertaining to her own love interests and insecurities. The production switches into something that resembles a song from Bridgers, but she comments on the state of social media for nine lines before SZA comes back onto the track.

Hardest Bars: “Special”

Similar to picking the best song from this album, there’s a specific line or few lines that stick out during each listen. SZA has plenty of egotistical, hype bars on this track and a few specifically about the hatred of a love interest. But the gut wrenching lyrics which show SZA’s realization of how she’s been hurt in the past almost always hit the hardest.

On “Special,” SZA tells the truth about how most people change themselves for their partner in a relationship, sometimes expecting a level of respect which never gets returned to them. The chorus is the most telling, with minute differences between each line displaying how hurt SZA was by this anonymous person.

SZA begins the chorus with “I wish I was special/ I gave all my special / Away to a loser / Now I’m just a loser.” She’s sharing how she surrendered much of her uniqueness, giving it up to nobody, which in turn made her a nobody as well.

She continues singing “I used to be special / But you made me hate me / Regret that I changed me,” before ending the hook with the lyrics “I hate that you made me / Just like you.” None of these lines are more than six words long, concisely displaying the meaning.

Final thoughts:

The tracklist is long, even longer than the “Ctrl” deluxe she released earlier this year, but without a SZA album for half a decade, no one’s complaining. Almost every song adds more to the meaning of the album, sharing a new vignette from SZA’s life which audiences haven’t heard about before.

The themes are similar to “Ctrl,” but the chances she took sonically on this project make it arguably even better than the triple platinum album which catapulted her into popularity. SZA has hinted that this could possibly be her last project, though these shifts in her sound that we hear on “SOS” could mean that she knows she has even more in store.

Published on December 21, 2022 at 1:50 pm

Contact Anish: asvasude@syr.edu | @anish_vasu