Still riding the wave of ‘Ctrl’, SZA is already looking ahead to her follow-up release, and outright dismisses the notion that the success of her debut has piled on the pressure over what comes next. In fact, the opposite seems to be true.
While SZA has spoken candidly in the past about how difficult she found the process of making ‘Ctrl’ thanks to her own insecurities and struggles with anxiety, it sounds as though she’s way more fired up this time around.
“I’m committed to making this album the best album of my life,” she says, “I know exactly what I did wrong on [‘Ctrl’] and... nobody knows exactly what they did wrong, but I know what I could have done better and I know exactly what I want to do [now].
“I’m not afraid of the kind of things that I was before, I’m way more excited to make an album than I could have ever been.”
And although it’s the personal nature of her lyrics that have helped launch her success, SZA says she’s taking a more outward approach with her follow-up music and writing from a “different perspective and stream of consciousness”.
“I definitely feel like it’s less [about] how I see what’s happened to me and more how I see what’s happening to the world,” she explains, “I’ve read so many crazy ass stories this year that just broke my heart, like things I just couldn’t believe were happening to people in the world. Kids in the world turning up dead with no addresses… just bizarre things.
“So I’m, like, writing from a perspective of… in and out of it. I have a lot of thoughts that I have to get out.”
DJ Khaled
