Her father, a Muslim, forced her to wear a hijab at school. It wasn't exactly the preferred garment for a pre-teen girl who was awakening to life, but there were other Muslim classmates who covered their heads with a veil at a school in Maplewood, a small white, Christian town in New Jersey. Things got complicated in 2001, with 9/11 and the attack on the Twin Towers. A wave of Islamophobia shook the country. She was 12 years old and had to endure harassment from classmates and teachers during some tough times as a Muslim in the United States. Since then, Solána Imani Rowe has been carrying an insecurity that she has taken advantage of by exposing it in the lyrics of some defiantly vulnerable and feminine songs. If there is any competition within current pop to hurricane Taylor Swift, it is through SZA.
The New York Times placed SOS, second and last album by SZA (pronounced Sizza), as the best of 2023. Although it was published in December 2022, it did not make the list for that year, since these selections actually go from November to November. The review says: “His melodies blur any difference between rapping and singing with casually acrobatic phrases filled with jazzy syncopations and surprising jumps.” In Rolling Stone He also took first place. “S.O.S. has dominated the cultural conversation of the year. An album that perfectly contorts disparate genres around raw emotion and talented verbiage,” notes the famous header.
Next February 4, SZA can culminate a stratospheric season if she manages to confirm her status as favorite at the Grammys: she is the one with the most nominations (nine), above Olivia Rodrigo and Taylor Swift, both with six. In addition, we will have the opportunity to see her live on June 1, 2024, since she is the headliner on the last day of Primavera Sound (Barcelona).
The rawly honest stories that SZA tells in her lyrics connect with a youth eager for real narratives that take them out of the narcotically illusory world of social media. The American artist naturally exposes her conflicts in her lyrics, almost always autobiographical: it is as if she were talking to a friend at three in the morning and huddled in a doorway with the words making their way through a haze of cigarette smoke. marijuana and alcohol. “I know it's not the best idea, but it could kill my ex. / And his new girlfriend would be next. / How did I get here? / I could kill my ex, even though I still love him. / But I'd rather be in jail than alone,” sings in the haunting yet warm Kill Bill, his biggest success, with 1.5 billion views on Spotify. “Let me tell you a secret: I've been fucking your best friend,” she intones. Supermodel. An often ruthless style that is offered with a patina of tenderness.
SZA (St. Louis, Missouri, 34 years old) grew up in an environment of righteousness, with an orthodox Muslim father and a strict mother who did not let her eat sweets and sweets until she was older. Today she tells, amused, that her mother cannot listen to some of her songs, like the one mentioned above. Supermodel. In return, his father was a fan of jazz and funk and what he heard at home formed his musical culture: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, George Clinton, James Brown. On her account, she discovered Björk. “I was fascinated by her ability to paint scenes with sounds,” she said of the Icelander.
SZA did not have a pleasant start to her career. Since 2012 he was performing music and composing for other artists: he co-wrote Feeling Myself (2014) for Beyoncé and Nicki Minaj, or Consideration (2016), for Rihanna. A talent scout for Top Dawg Entertainment, Kendrick Lamark and Schoolboy Q's record label, detected her quality and signed her. The singer recorded her debut album, Ctrl, ready to publish in 2015. The company preferred to delay it for strategic reasons, until after two years of discussions, in 2017 it decided. “I'm leaving it,” she wrote in a tweet that she later deleted. But the message had its effect and the record company released it that 2017. It was a success.
It has taken SZA five years to publish her second work, the praised S.O.S. An extensive album (23 songs, one hour and eight minutes) where Travis Scott, Ol' Dirty Bastard and Phoebe Bridges collaborate. If with Ctrl seduced critics and a select audience, with S.O.S. has reached all audiences thanks to its ability to wrap its dramatic messages in commercial music. The album plays hip hop, soul, pop, ballads… Some were advertised in bits and pieces on TikTok and The followers gave him a name. It is the case of Shirt. Taylor Swift would never dare to go narratively where she is diving. They both sing about relationships, but SZA from uncomfortable points of view: sex, obscenity, betrayal, resentment, arrogance, authority, submission, pride. Many of his songs are anthems of bad bitch that conveys a helpless fragility: the same thing she claims that she will kill her ex tells of the long road she had to go through to feel like a beautiful woman.
In 2019, the singer was the protagonist of an event that confirms her great popularity, the power of a well-placed tweet and the path that still needs to be taken in the United States regarding racial issues. SZA reported on Twitter how an employee of a cosmetics store in Calabasas (California) called security personnel to search her because she believed she had stolen from her. The singer wrote on the social network: “Sandy, from the Sephora store at 614 Calabasas, called security to make sure she was not stealing. We had a long talk. Have a good day, Sandy.” The store, the popular Sephora chain, reacted by closing all its stores in the United States (about 400) one day and took advantage of that day to give a course on diversity to its employees.
In a 2023 interview for the magazine Rolling Stone, The reporter tells how SZA treats her followers in such a warm way that it often borders on the reckless. He not only talks to them, but invites some to share a cigarette backstage or invites them to a party at his house. The singer justified it like this: “I know what it's like to feel small, that no one cares. Because that's how it was for much of my life. At school and high school they never paid much attention to me. So I try to make sure that people who like my music know this: 'I see you and I hear you.' It is reciprocal: the pop world does not take its eyes off him and listens massively to his songs.
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