SZA's Ctrl: 2 Yrs L8r
“When you turn down all the reverb and all the plugins and all the stacks...you're left with just your voice. And your thoughts. And you kind of have to say something — you don't have to say anything, but you have to mean it."
– SZA, The Breakfast Club
Two years ago, 26-year-old Solana Rowe, known professionally as SZA, released her debut album, Ctrl (pronounced “control”), a conceptual album whose lyrics spanned the gamut of self-love, insecurities, growing up, break-ups and hook-ups, and, generally, being 20-something, figuring life out. After listening to Ctrl for the first time, I felt in my bones that the album was a veritable classic, and how could it not be? Two years later, SZA’s album still resonates, influences, and relates to its audience; the honesty and vulnerability that permeates throughout her music will stay with me forever.
The day Ctrl dropped I streamed the album on Apple Music, playing it on a loop all summer long, listening to the lyrics like my own diary entries while washing dishes in my apartment, walking my dog around my complex, or blasting my stereo on every car ride. In her review of the album Karas Lamb wrote, “What surfaced on June 9th was a near-perfect confessional that found fans bowled over by the maturation of Solana Rowe’s signature sound, her generosity of spirit, and an effortless knack for the kind of candor that conjures broken car windows, cigarette burns, revenge sex, stiff middle fingers, and plenty of tears.” I couldn’t agree more; the second you listen to Ctrl you’re transported to those times in your life when you’ve felt or experienced the pain doled out on the records. I remember discussing the album with my boyfriend Albert ad nauseam, both of us impressed with what SZA was saying because she speaks about experiences most people aren’t real about; for example, when she sings on “The Weekend” about time-sharing a man, something I’ve never heard anyone sing about before.
Because SZA is around the same age as me, it was easy to relate to her and I felt giddy when she sang on “Drew Barrymore,” “Somebody get the tacos, somebody spark the blunt/ Let’s start the Narcos off at episode one.” Narcos impacted the culture, deserving many more awards than it was acknowledged with (although that’s a separate conversation), and the tangible scene she composes is authentic. Complimenting SZA’s amazing pen on Everyday Struggle, Joe Budden praises her for being able to be a writer, writing for other artists like Beyoncé and Rihanna (no biggie), and being an artist, making music that everyone wants to hear, and he asks her how she can do that—she clarifies that she does not separate the writer in herself from the artist stating, “I can only write from my most honest point of view…The best music has integrity.” I remember laughing at Albert’s assessment that SZA was saying things in her album that were more authentic than what some rappers were saying at the time; to hear men praise a woman’s art made me so proud, and it again reminded me why this album was special: it was an album that anyone can relate to. And it’s her pen that is responsible for the breadth of feelings invoked across the 14-track album, “[p]ractically sounding out her thoughts, [SZA] gives tangible shape to emotion and establishes a clear respect for the craft of delivery” (Lamb). Does she ever. In the same Budden interview, SZA divulges that creating the album was a huge learning process: learning how to write, feeling out her style, listening to which sounds made her happy, always striving to make something that could be in company with her favorites albums, albums she believes are the best. In producing her debut album destined to be titled Ctrl, SZA faced a new facet of herself as an artist, learning who she was musically, sonically, to make something that she could be proud of. After a combination of delays from the label and being a control freak, SZA was forced to accept that the joys of making an album, as in life, is enjoying the process, the journey, unperturbed about the final product and she finally let go. It was a big lesson in control.
The concept of the album—control and the illusion of control—is genius because it’s an issue I know we’ve all agonized over, or maybe it’s an emotion that creeps up on us intermittently, a desperation to know what is going to happen and the tendency to overthink everything. Reaching out to her mother and grandmother for advice, SZA records their wisdom and spins them into interludes, providing a pool of generational influence that have the potency of saving a young woman coming of age, making mistakes, and growing up. (It’s also a reminder that there’s a hell of a lot we can learn from our elders). Her grandmother’s commentary on how to deal with people who don’t like you, and who you in turn don’t like (stay out of their way) and how to speak up for yourself (say something, or they’ll think you’re stupid) is real as hell. And the big lesson of control? Simple. Let it go.
In her article, “SZA Is Finally in Ctrl,” Hunter Harris believes that it is this structure of using her mother’s and grandmother’s voices “that allows SZA to talk to herself more freely.” I understand exactly what SZA means when she admits to Harris that she didn’t understand her mother growing up, and only recently sought her out for advice; it’s a different situation when you’re grown and realize your mom might have gone through some of the same things you have and it might be worth listening to her. Sometimes it takes getting older to see that being a woman puts us on common ground with our mothers (for me it was having a baby), and their experiences and time on this Earth are invaluable. Once we understand our mothers we can learn to understand ourselves; we are borne from them, after all. I believe open communication between the generations is crucial to growing, reflecting, and evolving. Despite her mother and grandmother’s voices sprinkled throughout Ctrl, SZA “is at the center of this record, using her mother and grandmother’s words to help her work on her own heart” (Harris). In her Breakfast Club appearance, promoting the album, SZA shared that most of the album was her talking to herself, which supports Harris’s conclusion that it’s her mother and grandmother who allow her to do that. I encourage everyone to take stock in having open communication with your parents, grandparents, uncles, and aunts, because their stories just might shed light on your upbringing and bring you peace. One huge theme I took away from the album was talking about our insecurities and lack of self-love, thoughts that are intimidating to voice, yet SZA does so with remarkable finesse.
In the same interview with The Breakfast Club, SZA said something that I had never heard before and that I thought displayed great insight: Self-love is a tough thing to teach your kids, because it’s sort of led by example. I think that’s so true, and it’s the reason why I think we should spend more time talking to our parents (if you’re lucky to have them) to learn how they grew up, if they had anyone showing them to love themselves. Building your confidence and self-esteem can be such a tough thing to accomplish, I know it is for me, and it’s a slow process for anyone starting from zero. SZA tells Harris in her interview, “But needing to be loved and what I’m singing about isn’t even about men, it’s needing to be loved in general: by myself, by my friends.” SZA isn’t being presumptuous with her lyrics; she gets it—the struggle to see yourself the way your loved ones do, the insecurities of comparing yourself to others, doubts about your self-worth—and puts abstract feelings into a psalm, naming one of her songs after the actress Drew Barrymore, who represented the nontraditional beauty of girls everywhere who are a bit dorky and somewhat of an outcast. There’s such pain and truth in the following verse from “Drew Barrymore”: “I get so lonely, I forget what I’m worth/ We get so lonely, we pretend that it’s worse/ I’m so ashamed of myself, think I need therapy.” SZA makes it comfortable to be more honest with yourself, with the things you don’t like, to be genuinely okay with what makes you uncomfortable, and I’m so grateful for that. I love that in “Garden (Say It Like Dat)” she talks about her body insecurities, again in a raw and literal way, bluntly urging her lover to lie to her about having a big booty, begging to be loved, to show herself love. She doesn’t waste a word on any track, there is not a verse that takes up space; every line pulses with purpose like a racing heartbeat. She reads our minds and speaks for all of us, and what more can you ask of art?
Choosing a favorite song off Ctrl is hard, but if I had to decide, it would be the anthem that is “20 Something,” a song that perfectly encapsulates the angst of being in your twenties, not being enough, not having anything, and feeling afraid about the present, as well as the future. It’s a blessing of a song, one that gave me chills when I first heard it, and I was so grateful to SZA for writing it. Your twenties can be arduous; you’re finding someone to love you and fighting against the current to love yourself; you’re learning who you are in a world that’s constantly changing. It’s songs like this, and the thirteen other perfectly written tracks, that will make me remember where I was when I first heard them: 20 something, sharing my first apartment with my boyfriend and Schipperke, pumped that there was this girl from Maplewood, New Jersey, singing about being a “Normal Girl,” sharing her voice, her thoughts, feeling like in her own sadness and anxiety I was being understood. The experience of indulging in this album will stay with me even when I’m 90 something.
Harris, Hunter. “SZA Is Finally in Ctrl.” Vulture. New York Media, 2019.
https://www.vulture.com/2017/06/sza-ctrl-interview.html.
Lamb, Karas. “SZA-CTRL” Consequence of Sound. 2017. https://consequenceofsound.net/2017/06/album-review-sza-ctrl/.
SZA. Ctrl, Top Dawg Entertainment RCA, 2017
The Breakfast Club. “SZA Talks About Her New Album, Ex-Boyfriends, Sidechicks & More” YouTube , 7 June, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwOIBNYliBl .