In an extensive career-spanning conversation on Apple Music 1, SZA recently told host, Zane Lowe on her Apple Music Live performance and her record-breaking 2023. SZA also touches on navigating fame, her spiritual hygiene, overcoming anxiety, taking creative risks, and more. ROTIMI IGE brings excerpts:
On why she doesn’t listen back to her music…
…I don’t know how I feel about my album, or maybe I just feel disconnected from it in general. That was more so like, a culmination of all these other years that I was ready to get off me and move forward from. So now that it’s out and it’s just in another place, I don’t want to look back there and I don’t want to think about it. But that’s how I am with all my music, I never listened to ‘Ctrl’ again. I never thought about it again.
I don’t want to. Some people listen to their own music and it’s very nerve wracking for me, and I can’t enjoy anything. When I listen to everything, I’m always like, what mix is this? Why is this level wrong? Why is my voice so brassy? Why didn’t I EQ it more? Why, why, why? Why didn’t I sing this differently? Why did I choose this word? That’s not what I meant. So many things. And it doesn’t matter how many years pass, if I play my music, I just can’t. It’s too hard. It’s too hard to enjoy it. I don’t know.
About why New Yorkers are tough fans…
New York is not a welcoming crowd. Yes, super boring in the realm of, I don’t know what’s going on, but they’re very likely to deadpan you. Night one was probably the worst crowd I’ve had thus far on this leg, and I was like, oh my God. So night two, I was at war in my body. It was like, okay, I’m not here to have a good time. I’m here to prove a point. I’m here to prove that-
About her spiritual hygiene…
So I’ve been really trying to get my spiritual hygiene together because I realised as of recent that a lot of this shit is not normal. And I didn’t know how to process that experience. And I was having a lot of lashing out and a lot of frustration. And there’s a lot of opinions, a lot of entitlement to your space, a lot of entitlement to your time, a lot of expectation.
It does, and it actually makes me on the edge and not a kind person, because the anxiety of wondering how people are, there’s so much perceiving going on. But these people don’t know you. They’re seeing you in a vacuum in your most high-pressure moment. And it’s scary. So it’s like, oh my God, I’m not the person that I want to be right now because I’m not kind, calm, and relaxed, and patient and all these things. And it scares me like, whoa, whoa, whoa. And the people are ingesting me in that state. But it’s like this is the first time that I’ve had, I’m still the shy person from high school. I hate being perceived.
I hate coming outside. I don’t want to party. I don’t want anybody to even look at me, honestly. I don’t want to take pictures. I hate being on video. It’s the bane of my existence.
It makes me really, really uncomfortable to a way that I cry. And I took a lot of calm gummies before I sat down here. But being perceived, especially visually, is like my number one, I’m uncomfortable right now. And with this new level of attention with the album, it’s like I never had an issue with paparazzi in my life. I never had an issue with going viral for small things that I think are small in my life or any of those things. So then I had to sit down and really be like, no, for real.
Get a process fast. And so, I started praying a lot more. I restarted my Sadhana. My mother finished her Sadhana with Sadhguru, and did all these crazy programs, and she just so much more peaceful. My mother’s already peaceful. So saying that is, I didn’t think that she could be more peaceful than she is.
I have three different kinds of therapists. I have a hypnotherapist, I have a talk therapist, and then they tried to give me a psychiatrist…
On making music to prove a point…
Because people tell you every month when you haven’t put on music in five years, like, “Oh, we forgot about you. We don’t care about you. We have this person now. We don’t need you anymore. Blah, blah, blah.” And it’s like you believe them. Because also, I don’t know, some people choose music as a career and they feel very certain about what they’re doing and why they’re doing it, but I was never quite certain, and I really only did music to prove a point. I am always proving a point. That’s the reason. When I started making music, it was to my ex-fiancee because he was paying for everything but my food, my clothes, where I lived. And he was like eight years my senior.
So, I was so co-dependent and he was so talented, and he’s a designer and so brilliant. His ex-girlfriends were all lawyers and business women and artist that went to RISD and all these things, and I’m college dropout. I’m still a bartender at the strip club. I felt like I lacked value. So when I started trying to make music, it was like this thing that I didn’t have to try at, that I was randomly good at, because I’ve always written poetry and always felt emotional. So when I tried to do that, it was like… And then all the kids in my school went to Ivy League schools and have all these great lives and do all this cool stuff. If you look at Columbia High School, all the kids are really like… They’d be doing sh*t with their life. And it’s so random. I didn’t go to GW. I didn’t do all those things that the kids from my little suburban town did.
So the music thing was like, “Oh, all right.” It was that. It was like, “Oh, you all like this? Okay, I’ll do a little more.” And it became this thing and I was like, “Oh, am I good at that?” But then how do I get better at this?” Because that’s the thing. I don’t play any instruments. I didn’t grow up singing in church. I don’t have any formal singing training. I’ve never worked with a writer, so I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know anything about song structure or music theory. Most of my beats I stole off YouTube. I don’t know any producers.
All these things in my brain where I’m just like, “What?” But I really, I did have taste though. I lack discipline. Taste is crucial. Taste is the only thing that saved me, because I don’t have discipline or work ethic or any of that other stuff.
SZA On Hating Her Fame and Connecting With Her Fans…
I hate being famous. It sucks. I hate scrutiny. I hate being perceived. I love connecting with people in the crowd when I feel like it’s really me and you right now. And I go eye to eye with so many people during this show, and it’s something about tour that it makes the love real, and tangible. When I talk to y’all on DM and we talk about your life, or when we’re kicking it or whatever in the comments and it’s positive and it’s whatever and we’re making jokes. Or when I get to meet y’all after the show and we do the whole sheboygan and we talk about your sign, your boyfriend, your troubles, all those things or I see you releasing things at the show and just losing yourself, that’s real. That’s love. That’s tangible. I feel like that makes sense to me. That’s what makes me want to, if when I’m thinking, I’m like, “Damn, how can I shoot my love to the back of this arena real quick? Because there’s people back there that I can’t see, but I got to get the love to them because they’re giving the love to me.” So then I look to the back and I’d be like… I don’t know. I imagine my energy shooting to the back of whatever the space is. But I really, I don’t know. Love is the story. Love is the story right now for me, I’m realizing.
SZA On Freestyling Almost All Of Her Songs…
…like I can’t explain it. I’m already on the mic with this in front and I’ll start with a couple sentences and then I’ll be like, I can’t explain it, it’s like my thumbs could not move fast enough. It’s coming from just my brain or something, from somewhere. It’s like stream of consciousness, just jabbering. And so then I’ll write that and then I’ll try to sing it on the mic and then we’ll just see how that feels. But mostly, so while I’m writing it I can’t process it. I don’t know what it means yet. It’s like, I don’t know, like channel drawing or some shit. You know what I mean? Like when your hand’s just doing it but you’re not quite sure what’s going to come out on the paper.
Unfortunately, it’s the only form of creation I know how to do. I actually am trying to learn how to do the intentional kind where it’s like- I don’t like that I can’t do it. And I don’t like that I can’t do what I do on command. So that’s what I’m trying to learn right now, to will it to happen in the moment. But it’s such a creative thing, you have to wait for it. You have to surrender, you have to allow it. It’s so annoying.
SZA On Taking Creative Risks Because She Doesn’t Have Anymore Goals…
SZA: I’m in a space now I’m going to f-ck it with everything on the creative side. The business side is scary, but on the creative side, it’s kind of just like, “No, I don’t have any more goals, so I might as well just try at this point.”
Zane Lowe: When you say you don’t have any more goals, you mean you’ve caught up to where you would’ve hoped you could get and now everything on top of this is unknown? Is that kind of what you mean or?
SZA: I caught up to that on ‘Ctrl.’ I don’t have any more goals. And that sounds terrible, but career-wise, I keep saying that, nobody believes me, but you don’t understand, these are my goals. I’ve already, I’ve gone platinum. I didn’t think I’d ever go platinum. I sold a bunch of records. I got to meet Stevie Wonder. I got to meet Beyonce and work with her. I got to meet Frank Ocean. My mom came and my dad came to all these cool countries to see me perform. I’ve had sold out shows. I got to headline a festival. What else do I want? I’ve been nominated for Grammys. I won a Grammy. I’m done. For me, personally. So anything past this is so much more than I wanted, thought of, dreamed of.
SZA On Measuring Success…
So for me, that bar, the accolades are cool, but I was really just doing it for respect, to show that, “No, I’m smart.” Because I didn’t finish school. I didn’t get to prove that point to have like, “Oh, I have all these crazy degrees. I’m smart.” So I was like, “No, no, no. Me writing is me letting you know I’m smart.” But that’s a personal goal. Letting my mom know, letting people know that I’m an intelligent person or that I can write my own lyrics or that I can make a certain style of song because that’s the goal that I wanted to achieve, to show that I can work my brain that way or that I didn’t need a bunch of writers or I… The respect was more important to me than the accolade. Yeah, that is a success, to be respected amongst my peers for who I am, not on some, “Oh, you’re respected because you sold mad records.” That’s not real to me. And I feel like people knowing like, “Nah, that bitch is cold because she write all her own shit, she pick all her own shit. She designed the way her show goes.” That’s why I’m cold, not because I want number one. Yeah. Because I have ideas. I have ideas and I’m comfortable getting them out and I feel like they’re interesting. And I feel like that’s something that I really had to understand. But now past that, I don’t have anything. But that’s the whole combative approach to life, is what has to change. And that’s why I don’t connect to SOS anymore. Everything is not a fucking battle. I don’t have to prove a point all the time. Sometimes you can just make things because you feel like it.
