Album Review: SZA, SOS

SZA

SOS (released December 9, 2022)

Patience has to be a virtue for music fans.

Dr. Dre made us wait nearly a decade and a half for Detox … only to give us the Compton album instead (which was a good album, BTW!)

Those Beyonce visuals from the the Renaissance album? If you were holding your breath waiting, we would have designed airbrushed T-shirts in your honor five months ago.

And most of y’all reading this are still peeping in Usher’s bedroom window, hoping we get Confessions 2 any day now.

But I can’t think of a fanbase that has shown more patience than SZA’s squad. The first lady of Top Dawg Entertainment’s debut album CTRL, dropped way back in 2017 – long before the days of COVID and Tik Tok challenges and Nazi-loving rappers.

A simpler time.

In the years that followed, CTRL has become a bit of a cult classic, elevating SZA to be her generation’s embodiment of the Woman Fed Up. And though she’s never left the spotlight in years since, dropping enough singles and features to fill sophomore album, fans were deprived of album No. 2 for years.

Though there’s been LOTS of chatter from SZA herself about what caused that holdup, it doesn’t matter now. SOS is here, showcasing five years of growth but flauntin’ the same ol’ petty that made her a fave of every broken-hearted girl.

According to Internet lore, SZA wrote literally hundreds of songs after her debut LP. Twenty-three of those tracks made the final cut. While I understand why she has so much to say – along with the need to feed her ravenous, album-starved fanbase – it means that SZA has birthed a pretty chunky baby.

For the sake of this review, I think SOS can be paired down to four distinct acts.

The first quarter of SOS is probably the most acidic, and frankly, the weakest. The title track brazenly opens the album, threatening her critics, her ex’s, her industry peers and anyone else who dares cross her path: “Case all you hoes forgot, know you been more than lost without me … They can’t survive off mini-mes.” “Kill Bill” has her on an all-out rampage, threatening to murder her ex but “I still love him, though.” They’re perfect clap-back songs for the downtrodden but they’re all bark with little bite. The catchiness of “Seek & Destroy” and an Aaliyah interpolation on “Love Language” elevate things, providing a bit more creativity than paint-by-numbers trap tracks like “Low.” Been there, done that a billion times.

The second quarter of SOS finally steers the ship in the right direction, and is by far the strongest portion of the album. Those who were a bit disappointed by Babyface’s Girls Night Out collabo will find a lot to love with “Snooze,” an effortlessly smooth track that *mightcould* be one of my favorite songs of 2022 so far. Likewise, the heartfelt honesty of “Gone Girl” is SZA at her best:

I decide what demons I digest
Almost tired of repeatin’, I digress
Tryna find deeper meanin’ in nonsense
Tryna grow without hatin’ the process

In other words, the girl y’all knew is no longer here. After five years of fury, it’s the healing she deserves.

True to its name, “Ghost in the Machine” with Phoebe Bridgers is a haunting exploration of our (lack of) humanity while, kinda shockingly, SZA delivers impressively hard bars on “Smoking on My Ex Pack.” Is Rappin SZA really outchea bodying Rappin’ Bey?

I won’t answer that – I’m still ducking the Beyhive after my Renaissance review.

The third portion of SOS is its most experimental, and the results are as mixed as you’d expect. Give her props for branching beyond the CTRL template but the rock aesthetic of “F2F” isn’t the cleanest fit. Nor is “Nobody Gets Me,” which is very well written but feels like it was screenshotted from Taylor Swift’s depressing diary. “Special” does a superior job of tugging at heartstrings while showing a glimpse of a girl ready to take control of her own destiny:

I used to be special
But you made me hate me
Regret that I changed me
I hate that you made me
Just like you

The final portion of the album is the most familiar – showcasing all those singles that have floated around since 2020. The beautifully produced “Good Days” is probably the best of the bunch, with last year’s wrathful “I Hate U” being as potent as ever. “Shirt” is another well produced effort, thanks to the guiding hand of Darkchild and Freaky Rob, but lacks oomph. “Open Arms” with Travis Scott similarly drags. And album closer, “Forgiveless” comes off more as a curiosity – thanks to the inclusion of ODB’s rants – than an effective outro. A Big Baby Jesus appearance was not on my 2022 bingo card. But SZA’s album ACTUALLY coming out wasn’t either.

Much like SZA herself, SOS is a flawed album with good intentions – and that’s why her fanbase will embrace every note. For them, it represents a half decade of fulfillment, rewarding five years of patience with an impressive array of tracks. That’s enough for album of the year territory for the SZA-lers.

But for the rest of us, it’s hard to ignore the filler and usual sequencing issues that plague many modern-day albums (going from the infectious catchiness of “Too Late” into to the drab “Far,” for example). And yeah, SZA STILL has the annoying habit of chewing up her vocals on some tracks, making it tough to decipher her rants. I swear she’s speaking High Valyrian from Game of Thrones sometimes. Sure, there’s enough songs here to pluck out for an impressive SZA playlist, but as a complete body of work, there are definitely holes.

However, SOS does showcase needed growth for SZA, as both an artist as a woman. This is no mere retread of CTRL, and it shouldn’t be. Her attempts to diversify her sounds don’t always land, but they were a risk worth taking.

If CTRL represented the angry woman looking for redemption, SOS is the beginning of her healing process. She’s not yet the woman she strives to be, but she’s on the right path.

Hopefully it won’t take another five years for her to take us on that new journey.

Best tracks: “Gone Girl,” “Snooze,” “Too Late”

3.5 stars out of 5