Originally titled A, the debut album from SZA was meant to conclude a trilogy of self-titled releases following 2013’s S and 2014 ’s Z—her official entré into the music world. The release date was originally projected for summer 2016 and, as she revealed in an interview with Entertainment Weekly at the time, it was going to be a frank recounting of her romantic life, warts and all. “I’m talking a lot of grimy shit, but it’s truth,” she said. In the year the album sat in the wings with her label TDE, the fearless style of her grimy shit fermented into a powerful R&B set piece that is unlike any released in recent memory.
Over a lonely electric guitar riff on CTRL’s opening track ”Supermodel,” she sets the tone: “Let me tell you a secret/I been secretly banging your homeboy/Why you in Vegas all up on Valentine's Day?” This sorry setup isn’t fiction, either. In the same EW interview, she said that one of the songs on her album would be about her ex-boyfriend leaving her on Valentine’s Day while she slept with his friend as revenge. “[It] will be the first time he hears about it,” she said.
Boyfriends and more, ahem, casual acquaintances are taken to task across the album, but this isn’t a pity party. CTRL is about sexual freedom while still having your hunger for intimacy be taken seriously. On the woozy “Doves in the Wind,” SZA sings about Forrest Gump—not a figure running through her mind like Frank Ocean—but the kind of guy who sees women as more than just their bodies and who “deserve the whole box of chocolates.” Born Solána Rowe, the Jersey singer seems to take comfort in the freewheelin’ Forrest Gump character Jenny Curran (on Z track “Warm Winds,” SZA quotes young Jenny’s “Dear God, make me a bird so I can fly far, far away” prayer). But SZA finds solace in the sweetness offered to the adult Jenny by Forrest. That sentiment (without literal Gump references) bleeds through on tracks like the heartbreaking “Normal Girl,” about being unable to find a paramour who wants to take her home to meet his family, not just home to his bedroom. But when she sings, “I really wish I was a normal girl?” it’s a stinging reminder that with so many platforms to meet people, there are just that many more people to be hurt by. What if not finding an emotional connection means there’s something fundamentally wrong with you?
SZA’s scrutiny of modern dating is not always self-effacing. “Love Galore,” featuring an able Travis Scott, is the perfect anthem for the not-looking-for-a-pen-pal set. SZA and Scott coo, “Why you bother me when you know that you don’t want me?” It’s a sentiment that feels especially potent in 2017 when loneliness is so much easier to combat fingers-to-screen instead of face-to-face. Ask a friend and she’ll tell you she quit Tinder because she was tired of having ten text-boyfriends but not one who’s ever asked her out on an actual date. Its foil comes in “The Weekend,” a song about sharing a boyfriend with other women. The hook rings, “My man is my man is your man, heard it’s her man, too,” with a tone of both freedom and a muted sadness over settling. She knows there are concessions one makes to boost their sense of self-worth and little fibs we tell ourselves to turn a bad situation into something we think we want.
It's ironic that the album’s little misfires do not really come from SZA herself. “Doves in the Wind” features a verse from Kendrick Lamar who employs the song’s all about vaginas theme to produce some inscrutable lines like, “Pussy can be so facetious,” and, “How many niggas get mistaken for clitoris in a day?” No matter. SZA shines so bright, her honeyed voice making lines like, “I'm really tryna crack off that headboard/And bust it wide open for the right one” sound sweet instead of like bawdy pillow talk.
The album’s finest moment arrives with “Prom,” a meditation on the existential worry of youthful aging—“Fearin' not growin' up/Keepin' me up at night/Am I doin' enough?/Feel like I'm wastin' time”—that sounds like it was pilfered from The Forbidden Love EP-era. But SZA has never been one to glom onto trends. Other areas on the album have more of an indie influence, as well, like “Supermodel” which blooms from its spartan guitar intro into something more in line with old Jimmy Eat World than the undefinable “alt-R&B” tag. Even when there is trap percussion, like on “Garden (Say it Like Dat),” it’s still clear why SZA cites artists like Jamiroquai and Björk as influences. CTRL’s adds indie rock and neo-soul flourishes on its radio-friendly fare, while its cottony production centers the album and pushes against the borders of R&B. She’s not looking to fill the SoundCloud status quo.
SZA deals outside of the confines of her genres, a distinction that is all but meaningless in the polygluttonous context of 2017. Her forebears are more Keyshia Cole and Mary J. Blige, who have hurt and have been fearless enough to sing about that hurt, from Blige’s heart-crushing second album My Life to Keyshia’s chart-topper “Let It Go,” around and around again. People will go to extremes to absolve themselves of judgment, whether it’s for liking something as benign as “The Bachelor” or by mining the depths of psychology to determine that breaking someone’s heart was somehow just an act of radical self-care. SZA has the grit to say that it doesn’t just feel shitty, it is shitty. She is in touch with love’s fragilities and understands that it is worth protecting, there is just a lot of tireless work to get it. The record is all the more beautiful for it.
