SZA’s career didn’t move in a straight line toward stardom, and that’s part of what makes it worth tracing. Her early EPs, See.SZA.Run and S, released independently around 2012 and 2013, established an atmospheric, loosely structured sound that got her noticed by Top Dawg Entertainment — the label behind Kendrick Lamar — but as the only woman on a roster otherwise built around hip-hop, her project was frequently delayed and reworked.
That delay eventually produced Ctrl (2017), which became a genuine critical and commercial breakthrough: unusually candid songwriting about insecurity, relationships, and self-doubt, delivered in a loose, conversational style that felt distinct from the more polished R&B being made around it. It earned five Grammy nominations and cemented her as one of the genre’s most important new voices, even without an immediate follow-up.
The five-year wait for SOS (2022) became its own story — reports of scrapped sessions and shifting release dates were widely covered — but the album’s eventual release proved worth the wait commercially, debuting at number one and producing “Kill Bill,” one of the most inescapable songs of that year. The album’s genre range, dipping into rock and pop-punk influences alongside her R&B core, showed an artist willing to expand well past the sound that made her name.
Her career is a useful counterpoint to the usual pop trajectory of rapid ascent: years of critical acclaim before mainstream commercial success caught up, which has given her an unusually loyal fanbase that stuck with her through the gaps between albums rather than moving on.
