Why SZA Is More In CTRL Than Ever

Hailed by Barack Obama and Beyoncé, the American R&B singer’s candid lyrics and velvety voice catapulted her debut album into the platinum stratosphere. So what will she unleash on the world next?

- Nathaniel Goldberg

WHEN SOLÁNA ROWE’S DEBUT ALBUM CTRL FINALLY DROPPED to universal acclaim in June 2017, stellar reviews quickly turned into sales: by March this year, the album was certified platinum. With album sales came an international tour, which has seen Rowe traverse time zones the way most of us do subway stations on a morning commute. We had two private audiences with the 27-year-old between gigs on two different continents. First stop was New York for a photoshoot in a Greenpoint loft, before she sat down with us in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to bring us up to speed.

When we speak, Rowe, whom you will more likely know by her pseudonym SZA (pronounced scissor), is wearing her ‘Lara Croft Tomb Raider shit’ – cargo pants, a ‘tight-ass crop top’ and safari hat, having just returned from a five-mile hike through the ancient Taman Negara jungle (environmental science is a long-time passion). Rowe has plans to travel as much as possible – not a vacation, she stresses, because there is ‘a lot of work to do’. Instead, her ambition is to glean everything she can from her adventures and take steps to be her ‘best self – as an artist, a woman, a human being,’ so in turn she can ‘regurgitate it out into some wax that makes sense’.