SZA Reflects on Not Dropping a Track That Was ‘Too Honest': ‘I Have to Tell on Myself So I’m Not Bored'

The 'SOS' singer sat down with Kendrick Lamar for a 'Harper's Bazaar' cover story.

October 21, 2024

SZA admits that she uses vulnerability to stave off indifference.

The SOS singer sat down with Kendrick Lamar to interview him for his Harper’s Bazaar cover story, in which she revealed that last summer, she wrote a song she deemed to be “too honest.”

“I couldn’t put it out,” she explained. “I just be telling on myself so crazy and I can’t stop. It’s like I have to tell on myself so I’m not bored. Because otherwise, I’m just like, what’s the point?”

SZA said that when she's in the studio "it hurts too much sometimes," which is why she pretends to be "other people.” She then told Lamar that she pretends to be him, Frank Ocean, or Future “because it’s easy.”

“It’s easier to be me through their eyes than it is to sit with some of the really harsh things that I say about myself to myself,” she explained. “I guess I want to say nicer things about myself. So I’m like, ‘I guess I shouldn’t look through my eyes. I should look through somebody else’s.’”

Upon hearing Dot’s 2022 album, Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers, SZA recognized she wasn’t “digging [deep enough in my art]."

“I’m running from so many things. So now I’m in my bag, I’m like, ‘Okay, I’m codependent. I’m a people pleaser. I’m afraid of all these things," she said. "I’m so fucking selfish.’ All these things I tell myself because I have to, to strip the ego from the bottom. I have to because I’m bored to death with this iteration of myself.”

SZA asked herself why she's “trying to not be human so bad?" and came to the conlcusion that "it hurts so damn bad."

"But that is the job," SZA added. "No matter how many spirits you talk to or any of that. It just doesn’t matter. You have to be here. You’re going to be in the ether eventually. It’s just not now.”