“I have a 10-hour playlist of all the songs that have ever inspired me,” says SZA, “that over time have shaped me and played a part in building my identity.” For anyone who has listened to the Grammy winner’s music, it should come as no surprise that she has such an eclectic array of voices swirling in her head. Her acclaimed 2022 LP, SOS, broke records for an R&B album, but SZA transcends genre. She is known for the way her dynamic vocals seem to hoist her most deep-seated feelings and lift them out into the open, unencumbered by any strictures other than realness.
Born Solána Imani Rowe, SZA called her forthcoming album Lana after a childhood nickname, describing it as an attempt to “clean out my closet and start anew.” But in assembling her personal soundtrack for this issue, she chose songs tied to foundational memories: the Cars’s “Drive” playing in the waiting room at a “scary doctor’s appointment” or “trying to get my life together” to Animal Collective’s “Daily Routine” on commutes to her retail job. SZA suggests firing up Stevie Wonder’s “Too High” while reading her conversation with our November 2024 cover star, her friend and collaborator Kendrick Lamar. They go deep, so it only makes sense, she notes, to play an artist whose music NASA once sent into space to help explain humanity.
