Okay, I did not have a SZA album on my 2022 bingo card (did any of us?), and in April, when we launched our digital cover story series, I certainly didn’t think we’d get to cap off the year with an absolutely fire interview with her. Stranger things have happened, though, and here we are.
For our final cover of 2022, SZA (fresh off a Saturday Night Live performance) sat down with Jewel Wicker to talk about her sophomore album SOS, which arrived on Friday, December 9th. The conversation produced a fascinating glimpse into the artist’s mind, with one main takeaway: SZA is more than just an R&B singer.
If you’ve been closely paying attention, SZA’s actually been trying to get this point across for years. Rewinding to 2013 — when SZA had just inked a deal with Top Dawg Entertainment — in a CoSign interview with Consequence published that November, she discussed her Z EP, which would eventually come out the following spring. “Each song, I truly believe, has its own genre. It’s genre-less. It’s kind of literally just me,” she said at the time, “just a representation and presentation of me.”
SZA and Jewel’s conversation might change your perception of the singer-songwriter. It might not. Either way, SZA seems cool with it; she doesn’t need our validation. As she echoes to us nearly nine years to the day after that first interview: “It has nothing to do with other people. It’s just me being me and the type of music I like to make.”
I’m thankful to all of the artists who helped us road-test the cover story process this year, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say this one was my favorite yet. Hopefully you had the chance to dig into SOS over the weekend, because this interview rounds out the story of the album nicely.
Check out the cover story here, and let us know who you’d love to see on a cover in the new year. Enjoy, and happy holidays from all of us here at Consequence!
— Gab Ginsberg
Managing Editor
