SZA had an excellent profile in a recent issue of Elle Magazine. SZA – real name Solana Imani Rowe – is riding high with the huge success of her album SOS, including the huge single “Kill Bill” (which I love). SOS is breaking all kinds of records and SZA’s tour is one of the hottest concerts around. SZA doesn’t come across as riding high and full of confidence – she seems weary, anxious and slightly neurotic about how well everything’s going for her and how her work has launched her into the stratosphere. Some highlights from Elle:
Her sudden surge in popularity: “I know that people don’t love me because love is really unconditional, and I’m one scandal away from being canceled indefinitely like anyone else. I’m grateful that they like my art and that it speaks to them, and it connects and tethers all of us together in this weird way. It’s dope, but it’s also still a string that could be cut at any moment. Literally, sometimes there’s no rhyme or reason to it. Remember Susan Boyle? Like, what if I’m Susan Boyle?!”
Anxiety, shyness: “Some people think that, like, me having anxiety or me being shy or struggling with self-esteem is an act. I’m just, dead-ass, a person. Everybody else has feelings and fears. Why wouldn’t I be scared to be famous? Would you be scared to be famous? Because I’m famous, I’m not allowed to be scared? I wasn’t born famous. I had regular quiet-ass parents from a small town like everybody else. And I guess at some point I’m supposed to acclimate to all of this?”
She hates fittings: “I hate trying on clothes. I don’t shop anywhere. I just wear whatever is free in my mail. I’m like, ‘Is it an extra large? Great.’ If I can feel like I’m under a blanket when I’m outside, that’s ideal.”
Her Brazilian butt lift? “I treat my butt like a purse. It’s just there to enhance whatever else. And that’s why I paid for it, because it works all by itself…. I always wanted a really fat ass with less gym time. I didn’t succumb to industry pressure. I succumbed to my own eyes in the mirror and being like, No, I need some more ass.”
Losing interest in college after a year: “I really disrespected my parents for a long time….Me telling my mom I would rather go run in the streets and bartend at the strip club so I can pay for studio time [than go to school]. It’s crazy.”
Nothing is ever good enough: “I’m never happy with anything because I’m just like, ‘This was not good enough.’ I don’t know why I’m like that. I feel like some of it is probably a mental issue, some disorder that needs to be treated,” she says.
She surrounds herself with people who can know the real wig-free SZA: “If I can’t take my wig off in this space, I don’t need to be there! That’s why I hang out with Lizzo, because I can take my wig off at her house!”
Her songwriting method is comparable to Eminem: For him it was, “I am white and I do live in a trailer park with my mom.” SZA says her version of that is, “I did deserve less. I have did terrible things. I do miss my ex. I do got acne, I got eczema, like whatever the f–k.”
Her ex’s father texted her: “My ex’s father just texted me and was like, ‘My son is really hurt about what you said about him to the crowd in Portland,’” SZA says, adding that she told the crowd that her ex blocked her, but doesn’t see the problem with it since it is the truth. “You don’t get to block me on everything. Tell our mutual friends terrible things about me like I’m a monster, or whatever the case may be. And then I don’t get to speak my peace in my way. You go do your healing and I’ll do mine.”
She’s hardcore: “If it was time for me to go to war with a bitch based on my talents alone, I would come out victorious because there’s something inside of me that wants to devour someone’s soul.”
[From Elle]
I came out of this piece really loving her and wanting to hang out with her. She seems like a really cool person. It’s so great that she’s created a space for herself within the music industry where she can rap about boy trouble and neuroses without bravado and that she knows who her friends are. Her BBL story is interesting too – I like that she just comes out and talks about it and admits that she had no inclination to do the gym work.
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Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images, Elle.
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