Album Review: SZA Places Listeners Under Her CTRL
How you say something could be key to how it is received. How you play with your voice could, completely, redefine a statement’s meaning. It can even attract or deflect listeners. SZA is an artist who uses her voice like a speech playground. She slides through accents and monkey-bars through annotations to give her vocals a charm that changes in pace and punctuation. The result is record that grabs listeners and places them in a hypnotic state of attention or rather under SZA’s CTRL.
SZA – Love Galore (Official Video) ft. Travis Scott
I love SZA’s voice not because of its power as much as it placidity. She rolls and curves her tongue through songs like a cool whip. It is as if she puts on a persona for each track, and you fall for her characters. In “Love Galore” she feels like the protagonist to some 1800’s Hip Hop novel by Emily Bronte, and in “Doves In The Wind” she is “Spike Leeing” Kendrick Lamar with pussy power. Honestly, I want a full, collab album with these two. Both understand that putting on a song is like putting on an outfit, you have to wear it over your skin and own it. There back and forth brims with chemistry, and stands out amongst other songs like “Anything” and “Go Gina”, that, again, show a voice hypnotizes in the uniqueness of its force more than its actuality. We all are forces, but to be a distinct one take work. As SZA uses “The Weekend”, “Prom”, and “Normal Girl” as platforms to further her singing capacity, I could not help but think back to Aaliyah, and her own talent at being softly and sweetly thoughtful. When SZA sings she builds the bridge between affirmation and vulnerability by showing they both connect on the idea of self-discovery. You have to be open to be empowered, and you have to be unlimited in such openness to remain so. Hence, the whole of CTRL or “control” is to realize that the only time you are in charge of yourself as person is when you realize you are not in control of your situations: only your reactions. For More Information On SZA Click Here.
SZA – Drew Barrymore (Audio)
