95 North. . . The Newspaper

If you haven't heard SZA sing, run over to the record store and give her album CTRL a spin. Soon enough, you'll discover that she's created the freshest album in R&B since Solange's 2016 masterpiece A Seat at the Table , which I wrote about  here . While Solange's masterpiece focused on playing the long game, with drawn-out beats, lingering baselines, and vocal meditations that looked deep into the past, in many ways, SZA is the complete opposite. Her music is fresh. Immediate. Emotions? Raw. She's even sometimes crude. The world that makes up her songs is entirely relatable and real. She ponders work, being late to work, eating tacos, obsessing over TV shows, jealousy, emotional insecurity, carnal pleasures, sadness, joy, Las Vegas, New Jersey,  and everything else in between. In other words, it covers the same terrain the Bible does. As Cat Power once said, "and I'm not kidding". A few key songs: "Supermodel"  is drenched in ...

Let's get it out of the way. Solange is Beyonce's sister. But she ain't making the same music. Case in point: her 2016 album  A Seat at the Table , which put the world on notice, and for good reason. In A Seat at the Table  Solange managed to convey truth in every song, line by line, with extended, booming bass lines drawing out her art to the far reaches of space.  She penned these songs with a eye for detail. Profound poetry is paired with layered, modern, and fresh sounding soul to create an album that occupies its own artistic space. While the keyboards, imaginative guitars, sharp drums, and deep layered bass punctuate the poetry to the max, it is Solange's voice that makes your soul feel like it's been soaking in a restorative hot spring. The album is an emotional trip, like a therapy session. It details mistakes, concerns, heartache, ambitions, future hopes-all of it. None of the songs are drawn out, either, but instead its a album that demands you listen...