There are other icons used to underscore SZA’s star power. Both veterans of their respective sports and some of the best players of their generations, she’s basically saying she’s doing what the other R&B girls simply can’t do. “Talkin’ I’m off the bench like Brady / I’m pressin’ niggas like KD, it’s up,” she sing-raps, referring to Tom Brady and Kevin Durant. Producer Jay Versace calls upon Gabriel Hardeman Delegation’s “Until I Found the Lord (My Soul Couldn’t Rest)” for the beat, giving her disses the weight of the gospel.
The sample, however, has slightly different vibes. SZA came on the album’s intro mad as hell (see lyrics like “Nah, li’l bitch, can’t let you finish” or “Yeah, that’s right, I need commissions on mine / All that sauce you got from me”). Below, a song-by-song guide to all the key references in SOS. There’s even a little bit of Björk and Beyoncé, sampled and interpolated, respectively. The album references evoke images of a certain recently divorced quarterback clinging to his top spot in football, multiple canonical films (most notably Save the Last Dance), teachings from a controversial celebrity guru, and biblical tales of floods and resurrection. Even the album cover harkens back to a famous image of Princess Diana perched mournfully atop the edge of a diving board, a symbol of her isolation. In her latest album, SOS, her second major project since the timeless classic Ctrl, SZA employs an arsenal of pop-culture references to add some spice to her already well-seasoned lyrics about growing up (“I’m so mature, I got me a therapist to tell me there’s other men / I don’t want none, I just want you,” she sings on “Kill Bill”) and bitch-ass men (“Abracadabra, you niggas Sideshow,” raps SZA in “Smoking on My Ex Pack”). Her vulnerable tracks are often exercises in telling on herself - a brutally honest look at the extent to which a man had her fucked up, quiet admissions of insecurity, or just how many prisoners her pussy got. If you peel back all the layers of SZA, you’ll find a lyricist at the core.
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