What?! A girl on Top Dawg Entertainment? And she's a SINGER, not a rapper? More than a couple of people were confused and surprised when TDE signed up-and-comer shy singer SZA to their prestigious label. Following the landmark hip-hop album by Kendrick Lamar "Good Kid M.a.a.d City", TDE has been on everyone's radar. People began to notice the unorthodox way it's run, and its penchant for quality releases that take time to gestate, without feeling the need to release endless mixtapes to maintain attention. They're an anomaly in the hip-hop industry, which is sadly obsessed with keeping the attention and ears of fickle, insatiable listeners with a steady stream of mediocre, minimal effort material; TDE forgoes the quantity for the tied-and-true quality, with a trickle of
super talented individuals taking their time to release excellent, critical darling albums. Recent example was Schoolboy Q's perpetually delayed sophomore album "Oxymoron", which was pretty good, but took a while to show up in stores following its announcement.

Thankfully, SZA (real name: Solana Rowe) didn't have to suffer the misfortune of several delays, unlike another young black musician named Azealia Banks, whose "Broke with Expensive Taste" has been in the pipeline for way too long. Her follow up full-length album "Z", which is hot on the heels of her outstanding "S" EP, is a winning mixture of personality, raw talent, timeliness, and creativity; it feels very much a product of its time, but it's so much more than another indie R&B release. So much more. SZA hasn't been making music for more than a couple years, and it's that naivety, atypical impulses, and an ear for hot sounds that make "Z" such a stellar release that deserves all the attention it's getting and more.

It's hard to find contemporaries for SZA. Janelle Monae is a good jumping off point, but so is Beyonce, whose recent self-titled album undoubtedly had an impact on "Z"'s sound. Either way, SZA is doing something that is all her own. Her taste in beats is eclectic to say the very least - "Z" goes from Marvin Gaye vintage funk ("Sweet November"), to electro-tinged sexy jams ("Julia") to pensive, Arca levels of strange hip-hop inflected beats ("Babylon", which has an incredible video), to Purity Ring influenced dark synthpop ("Omega") within these 41 minutes. It would almost be too much and too scattershot if left in the hands of someone less quirky and ambitious, but SZA grounds it with her winning, somewhat self-deprecative persona. "Babylon" is an obvious album highlight, with its quasi-religious imagery and pulsing, ominous beats, featuring distorted, shrieking snares, and groaning bass. A new addition to this single is a hungry, snarling guest spot from fellow TDE wunderkind, Kendrick Lamar. By now you expect quality in everything he does, even if it's a simple guest verse, and this is no different. He spits fire here, and his incredible flow rides the beat damn well. But SZA, she just comes across depressed as all hell. The layered, reverb-heavy vocals dripping with a facetious, sly, but vulnerable veneer, is the icing on this excellent track.

To be honest, it's hard to flat out dislike any of the songs here. Even the parts that should, in all seriousness, be low points, an ear for sounds and the personality SZA grants the material somewhat elevates it above the sum of its parts. Using a longform sample of one of XXYYXX's unfortunately tedious and stylishly overbearing songs (doesn't matter which one because they all sound the same) as a basis for a track seems like a terrible idea, especially when you add in the prospect of Chance the Rapper attempting to rap over such a chilled beat - but, somehow, it ends up being not only enjoyable, but good. It's moments like this, even in comparison to the stronger material, that really shows how versatile, creative, and resourceful SZA can be, and her inherent talent with music. The extended Marvin Gaye sample that provides the backbone for "Sweet November" looks on paper to be another potential disaster, but again, SZA proves that her approach and her personality imbued music overcomes what may seem like a bad idea at first, and flips it to be a strength that she can
take shitty ideas and make them work. That doesn't necessarily excuse the lazy sampling, though, and that in and of itself takes away from "Z".

I can safely say I am a fan of SZA's work now. The article Complex wrote on her a few years ago when she was first emerging is so telling of the kind of person she is. Growing up Muslim and being mostly sheltered from the booming hip-hop craze of the 90's and early 2000's, instead being exposed to classic jazz and soul from the likes of Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, and Louie Armstrong, in addition to being mostly an anxious, isolated loner who preferred the formless appearance of boy's clothes, is all very telling. She is the real deal; she only became associated with TDE by pure chance, and after proving herself with both her two previous EPs, and now, "Z", I'm sure she has a damn bright future ahead of her. One inspiring thing she spoke of in the Complex article was how you can never rely on just talent to carry you, and you need skill to back it up. SZA may be relatively new to music, but she has both of those in spades. Here's looking forward to the final entry to the "name trilogy", following the "S" EP, and "Z", that "A" will see her continue to master her creative brand of R&B. Only SZA can make such good SZA music.