Music
SZA is a 'Tomboy at Heart'
SZA is the first female artist signed to rap label Top Dawg Entertainment. Relive her night with Red Bull Studios LA in 2014.
SZA wants to say grace.
She’s seated at the head of a long blonde wood table in a cozy room tucked inside the maze that makes up Red Bull Studios LA. Fat white candles in silver candelabras glimmer above bunches of sunset-colored roses. Chef Octavio Becerra is sending out a steady stream of dishes -- thick slices of country bread smeared with ricotta and dotted with spring-green peas, skewered prawns rubbed with burnt red spices alongside ramekins of creamy yogurt, squares of pork belly dredged in maple syrup. The neck of a bottle of Veuve Clicquot juts out of a bucket beaded with condensation.
The whole shebang is in honor of the 24-year-old singer who, last summer, became the first female artist signed to rap label Top Dawg Entertainment, and her first retail release, the critically acclaimed "Z" EP. Later in the evening, label-mate Kendrick Lamar will join her on an intimate stage for his feature on "Babylon;" Mac Miller will praise her before playing on one of the two songs he produced on the project. Of course she wants to say grace.
“Is that weird?” she says, her eyes flitting down the length of the table before resting on Terrence “Punch” Henderson, TDE co-president and her near-constant companion. He shrugs. She scrunches up her freckled nose and decides it is.
To be so young and have had such a whirlwind year, SZA doesn’t seem the least bit drunk on herself. (When the champagne is popped, the server intends to pour it just for her, but she insists it be shared with everyone.) She could be forgiven for a little preening. In addition to dropping a project on one of today's most respected and successful independent record labels, she lent her sultry, feather pillow-soft voice to songs by ScHoolboy Q and Chance The Rapper, plus she racked up appearances in an array of publications. Even Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar nearly knocked each other down to gush over her exuberant burst of curls.
Tonight, her hair is untamed, the ends tawny because she dyed them that afternoon. “The bigger the hair, the smaller the hips. I’m a bigger girl,” she explains. She’s wearing ginormous shredded jeans splotched with bleach, but her pristine white crop top exposes a stretch of stomach that looks anything but big.
Picking at a salad and slab of snapper — she has celiac disease and became a pescatarian two years ago — SZA is more focused on scrolling down her Twitter feed than soaking up adoration from the group gathered here to celebrate her. Her head suddenly snaps up, and with concern in her voice, she tells Dave Free, the other TDE president, that the RSVP link for the performance tonight is broken.
“Yeah, it went too ham,” he says, smiling. “We got, like, 300 in an hour. People were talking about driving down from Seattle.”
SZA performs at Red Bull Studios LA
© Carlo Cruz/Red Bull Content Pool
Growing up in Maplewood, New Jersey, SZA (whose birth name is Solana Rowe) did not dream of becoming a singer, even though the area had already produced a star, Lauryn Hill. The daughter of a Muslim father, SZA lived a very sheltered childhood. She wore long sleeves and a hijab for a time, and went to a Muslim prep school. She didn’t watch TV or listen to the radio and wasn’t allowed much current-day secular music. Instead, her father’s playlist, full of jazz legends like Miles Davis and, tellingly, Billie Holiday, floated through the house.
A small amount of other music seeped into her world — a mix CD given out in a gift bag from a bar mitzvah, a half sister who visited and blared rap music, a lost iPod she found, a neighbor who sang along to Aaliyah. Still, she was more obsessed with being a competitive gymnast, ranking fifth in the country when she was a high school sophomore.
After graduating, she attended a few colleges. Although she was smart, she grew bored with school, mostly got high and dropped out. Meanwhile, her brother was a rapper, and randomly, he asked her to sing on one of his songs. When he played it back, she didn’t think it was half bad. Through her boyfriend at the time, she ended up singing onstage one night. Her friends were shocked.
“No one [knew],” a longtime friend of SZA’s in town from New Jersey, says. “She bartended and sang some, but no one knew.”
Kendrick Lamar and SZA
© Carlo Cruz/Red Bull Content Pool
As SZA told Complex last year, she met Punch in 2011 at Lamar’s CMJ show. Working for streetwear brand 10.Deep, which was sponsoring Lamar's show, she offered to outfit the crew and asked their sizes. She’d brought along a girlfriend, who was listening to a song of SZA’s on her headphones. Punch was intrigued.
“I heard her friend just jammin’, and was like, ‘What’s she listening to? She’s not even listening to what we’re saying!’” Punch says. He grabbed the headphones and liked what he heard. “If she’d done that ‘listen to my demo [thing],’ we probably wouldn’t be sitting here.”
The two kept in touch and began building a professional relationship. She’d ask for his opinions on a song here and there and, in October of 2012, she released her debut EP, "See.SZA.Run." Her second EP, "S," dropped a few months later, in the spring of 2013. In the meantime, Punch had introduced her music to the rest of the team. Her attention to lyrics was a check in the plus column for a crew intensely focused on such, and the fact that she’s a “tomboy at heart” meant she fit right in with the fellas.
Still, Punch, who’s continued to take the lead on her development, relishes the opportunities handling a woman presents. “It’s a passion project. And it’s so different. With her, I can reach out to makeup companies,” he stops and chuckles. “I’m running out for hair care products.”
Mac Miller and SZA
© Carlo Cruz/Red Bull Content Pool
Mac Miller has crashed the dinner. Bursting in with a big smile, he settles down to make a plate, then plunges into a funny running monologue, barely breaking to take bites. He needs to be sober for 15 days for something, and someone asks how many days he has. He makes a circle with his thumb and index finger.
“I’m gettin’ faded,” SZA announces, sipping on a shot of Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Honey (“mine and Punch’s favorite”).
This is a rare occasion. “I never go out,” she says, a nod to the relative isolation of her youth. “I’m a homebody.” She prefers cooking and “doing activities” like hiking or playing indoor sand volleyball. Her competitive vein still pulses.
Dinner has ended without ceremony, and she disappears to change for the show. Jay Rock searches for a paper plate, TDE CEO Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith arrives with Lamar in tow. Miller and Terrace Martin are jamming for the fans that have started to fill up the small studio, lit magenta and powder blue. Smoke swells and votive candles glow.
Having slipped on a graphic print minidress bristling with silver tinsel and platform sneakers, SZA, all smiles, mingles. When she steps onstage, she’s giggly and a little nervous, and invites the crowd to sit if they’re uncomfortable. Like a pastor in a Southern Baptist church, she nudges everyone to introduce themselves to the person on either side of them, becoming family for this brief moment in time. The honey whiskey has pleasantly charred her voice, which is husky as she sing-murmurs a line or two from Fleetwood Mac’s 'Dreams.'
“I don’t think this young lady knows how amazing she is,” Miller says.
SZA
© Carlo Cruz/Red Bull Content Pool
Eyes mostly closed, swaying groovily side to side, SZA performs the whole of 'Z,' though she stops midway through to tell the story of how she almost chucked the record.
“I was in Vegas and I couldn’t ride to it. I was like, ‘I hate my project’ and I told Punch, ‘I can’t put this project out,’” she explains. “I was brushing my teeth, just going ham, and this Marvin Gaye instrumental came on.” “Rebirthed,” she came home and recorded 'Sweet November' and 'Wood Winds.'
A bearded Lamar, looking looser and more laid back than he ever has at his own concerts, vibes along after he does his verse on 'Babylon,' and when he exits, she peers into the audience and asks if anyone would like her to sing anything else.
Naturally, they do, and after she does 'Aftermath,' she remembers the one more song she’d actually like to sing: 'Ice Moon,' the song that “lowkey got me signed.”
“Thank you for coming to Camp SZA,” she says, shooting one final bright beam of a smile into the crowd of sweaty fans.
She got in the grace, after all.