SZA’s music sounds like she writes the song first and the beat and production are consequently made to not only follow but complement her vocals, her voice and her melodies.
It’s in the way it all blends in and meshes perfectly together seemingly tying into a perfect bow, becoming one like skin to bone. Having followed the RnB songbird from her last project ‘CTRL’ which was released damn near five years ago one can easily come to terms with what she represents, and that’s that Katherine Heigl-Gerard Butler, ugly truth.
Except for the part where movies (romcoms particularly) tend to shy away from reality and rather root themselves in fallacies of fate playing ventriloquist to a happy-ever-after that’s in cognito for a never-ever-after, because I mean how often does one go through the lows of this existential dread called life and feel like they got this on lock because there’s more to this season than one bad episode. OR because there’s light at the end of the tunnel. OR because there’s an upbeat, giddy soundtrack at the end of it all to try and convince you that all things come to an end.
The answer is NEVER.
When one’s world is crumbling and falling apart it’s as good as the end of the world, an apocalypse, all hell breaking loose, and the worst imaginable actually unfolding and ceasing to stay as only a figment of one’s imagination but transcending into a dreadful reality. And that dear friends, is the ugly truth. SOS is another of Solana’s attempts of putting down the veil of all pretence and pouring out from deep within another of those ugly truths that as women we’ve been primed to give a blind eye to under the guise of being a strong black woman when all you want to do deep inside is collapse your shoulders and let out some sobs, scream and shout and let the world feel your wrath.
In that vein, this project represents a rebellion, and the last stage of grief, acceptance, as we go through pages of Solana’s diary in her attempt to catch us up with the rollercoaster ride life put her through from the last time we spoke in 2017’s CTRL.
The project’s garnished with an impressive track list of 23 Jordan tracks, a very extensive and expansive tracklist that allows one to get lost in her (SZA’s) world and escape the loneliness of feeling like nobody gets you. Because here’s someone who’s translated all their feelings and emotions into a Jordan-tracked project and it almost feels like she’s written you into her story as well just by how she’s given a voice to feelings and emotions that you yourself fail to express simply because it’s too much a burden to translate feelings of loss, pain and hurt into words, which Solana does beautifully capturing our hearts.
Titled ‘S.O.S’, which is an internationally recognized distress signal in radio code, it almost feels like a calling or an invite from SZA to come and cry with her as we transcend into that stage of cathartic expression as a form of acceptance whilst en route to healing.
Opening this S.O.S journey with the eponymous titular track ‘S.O.S’, it commences with a distress code in Morse Code that can be heard at different points in the album, it’s a running theme of some sort that’s also complemented by the sample of the Gabriel Hardeman Delegation’s 1976 gospel exhortation “Until I Found the Lord (My Soul Couldn’t Rest)”, which can be heard throughout the whole song. “Last night I cried”
Tracks like ‘Kill bill’ named after Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill movies, bring to the forefront dark themes of “if I can’t have you, no one else will”, and themes of loneliness after having found peace and comfort in the arms of a lover, so much that when the inevitable happens and you part ways you’re pushed to the bottom of the water-filled barrel where you’ll sink because you feel like you just lost a piece of the puzzle that is you, that actually completed the picture and gave it meaning. And now you’re just an incomplete puzzle attempting to show a picture that nobody else gets.
As the track concludes, Solana goes, “I just killed my ex, I still love him though, I’d rather be in hell than alone”, a line a lot of people will think is crazy, and a thought that most people will think is bewilderingly ridiculous.
Understandably so. When one looks at something from a retrospective point of view, but in the heat and thick of the moment when one’s world is chronically and effectively disintegrating the thought sounds anything but bonkers. Instead, it represents the depth of human emotion, and beyond that the power of human connection, and how its sudden, unprovoked absence can easily bring about an unravelling and breakdown reflected by such vile thoughts, inciting a crime of passion. I think SZA captures that timeframe beautifully with that killer (pun intended) closing line.
Other tracks from the album that also explore this theme are nobody gets me, a break-up anthem that starts and is characterized by unmistakable guitar strums reminiscent of CTRL’s Supermodel and a vulnerability we’ve come to associate with Solana. The artist has become synonymous with having the wildest thoughts, those that happen in the thick of it, and putting them in song, and it’s almost undeniable that she’s drawing from personal experience just by how certain things and certain emotions can only be enunciated from experience.
‘Kill Bill’ seemingly gives Solana the platform to give voice to some widely and commonly shared sentiments by not only scorned lovers but most exclusively the human condition that yearns for and rather embodies an inherent sense of selfishness that breeds a sentiment of wanting someone wholesomely for yourself.
You know that moment after a breakup when your brain is fried from all sorts of contradictory senses that sometimes if not all, just won’t add up? You hate him, but you want him back still a fan even though I was salty. You want to move on and move past it so time can do all its healing but you don’t want him to forget you and the moments shared because that will not only suck the living life out of you but also all the meaning out of what you thought you had and shared, hate to see you with some other broad, [I] know you [are] happy, hate to see you happy, if I’m not the one driving
Moving from the very relatable but almost ‘Africanly’ taboo themes touched on ‘Kill Bill’, we drive onto the ‘seek & destroy’ avenue. A record that sounds and feels like a beautiful car crash, because its contents depict ruins but carried through Solana’s high octaves almost feels liberating and vibey,
‘chasing fatter ass and fake connections….chasing facades in all directions, chances are I’ve got no direction, begging my angels for protection…you push me past my capacity
It also feels like with SOS we’re presented with different facets of who Solana is, or could be, with differing and varying tones in terms of production but still pretty much exploring the same themes of loss and heartache and being vulnerable enough to let the audience peek into and scab at what I can only imagine as some of her unpleasurable wounds. We get Alternative Solana in F2F, a record that feels like it could’ve been a soundtrack to an early 2000s Drew-Barrymore-like romcom, chick flick.
All throughout the project, we’re presented with varying sounds, sonics and styles that all more or less explore vulnerability, and heartache all the while embodying an aspect of growth.
Despite the vulnerable and candid aspect of this record, Solana makes no mistake of playing the victim. There are tracks on there that are empowering and pulsingly liberating, and this is part of what’s refreshing about consuming the record, it’s also a representation of taking back one’s power and keeping it moving in spite of efforts from the opposition to push you backwards, trample you and keep you at the bottom.
Got another side of me, I like to get it popping, but these bitches in my business got me outchea choosing violence, if you see me out in public, you don’t know me keep it silent, in the bedroom, I be screaming, but outside I keep it quiet.
Proof of how multifaceted women are, in a man’s world where the traditional portrayal and view of them have tended to centre on the softer side of the species paired with its qualities that supposedly and ironically make them weak but at the same time suited to not only bear life but nurture it too. This project serves to show the multiple dimensions that a woman carries just like any other living organism, making a woman as good as a rose. Beautiful, but thorny. Extending beyond that without forgetting tracks like ‘smokin on my ex pack’ which made #30 on Complex’s Best Rap Verses of 2022 not as a token but due to the flaring temperature of the verse dropped by Solana, so flaring it is one cannot deny how hard she went,
booty softer than leather…Im really not friendly I need my credit niggas hate that…You test it, I might go, You push it, I might pop
I’m fuckin’ on heartthrobs
I got your favorite rapper blocked
I heard the dick was whack
Your favorite athlete screamin’, “Text me back”
I make no exception
Beyond that, SZA goes hard on the closing track of the project, ‘Forgiveless’, which has a sick beat and killer opening by Wu-Tang’s Ol’ Dirty Bastard. Overall, this track feels like a revenge track, as she addresses disrespect and backtalkers (people who talk behind your back), and nosebleed haters by reasserting herself as the bad bitch she is, whilst treading the fine lines between rhythm and poetry, RAP, and songstressING, in the heavily hip-hop inspired project.
Gotta watch how you whisper when you around me, though
Give a fuck what you prefer, I’m too profound to go
Back and forth with no average dork……I don’t mind competition, it is what it is
You don’t mind second fiddle, that’s why you a bitch…….
….I don’t mind burnin’ bridges, love my enemies, center peace
Call that bitch my kid, she ain’t no kin to me
I might forgive it, I won’t forget it
