SZA's had an impeccable with the release of CTRL. The album catapulted her career to another level and made her one of the most revered artists in R&B today. The album has since gone gold as well as several songs on the album. In a recent interview, she revealed how the album's intro track came about.
In an interview for Billboard's "How It Went Down" series, SZA explained the process of CTRL's intro song. The dark, acoustic tune has been regarded as a stand-out on the album and the song's strength landed a placement on HBO's Insecure. She explained to Billboard the difficulties she had building the song after it's initial composition. She said the song was the first acoustic song she ever made or even attempted to make. Her friend and the song's co-writer, Tyron Donaldson, just learned how to play the guitar a few days before that. While they were jamming and smoking their regular morning joint, the chords he played moved her so much that she later asked him to record a loop of it and hopped into the booth and freestyled the songs lyrics. However, after the two of them wrapped up the song's initial recording, they decided that it needed an extra something.
"At the end of a song, you want to mix it and make it better and add shit to it and like figure out, 'Does it need backgrounds?'" She says, "Everything we've ever tried to add to that song did not work. Pharrell tried to add drums to the song but it's not on a grid, it's not quantized. It's just Ty trying to play guitar for the third time ever in his life."
Despite the fact that he didn't add anything on the production side of the single, he does have credits for additional vocals on the song.
In other SZA related news, she announced that she's working on an album with Tame Impala's Kevin Parker and Mark Ronson. The announcement came shortly after Parker and Ronson debuted an unreleased collaboration between the three at Governor's Ball. Hopefully that project sees the light of day soon.
Check out SZA's break down of "Supermodel" below:
