SZA bookends her enthralling new album with a pair of boom-bappy hip-hop tracks in which the R&B singer — a onetime cult figure who's transformed into a major pop presence in the half-decade since her 2017 major-label debut, "Ctrl" — raps as ferociously as anyone has this year.
On the LP's opening title track, "SOS," she announces her long-anticipated return by comparing herself to Tom Brady and Kevin Durant; in the closer, "Forgiveless" — which pairs an ethereal Björk sample with a loopy verse by the late Ol' Dirty Bastard — she's looking for competition but can't find anyone equal to the task.
Both songs show off a rhythmic acuity and a nimbleness of flow that put the 33-year-old up there pretty close to Beyoncé and Lauryn Hill in the pantheon of female singers with the hardest of bars. (The album's "general theme is: I'm pretty pissed," SZA said this week in a radio interview with Hot 97.) Indeed, there's actually a third rap cut on "SOS" at the midpoint of this 23-track set, and it might be the most stank-face-inducing of all: "Your favorite athlete screaming, 'Text me back,'" she raps in "Smoking on My Ex Pack," the words steaming like cooling lava, "I make no exception — the lesser part of me loves all the cap."
