SZA’s Record Label Took Her Hard Drive After She Took too Long to Write Songs

SZA in the official video for ‘Supermodel’; Photo: YouTube/TDE/Apple Music

Following the stereotypical heavy-handed character of a record label, someone from the TDE label forced neo-soul talent SZA to release her album Ctrl in June, earlier than she wanted. In fact, they took the hard drive where she had been storing the songs.

SZA lost control of the release of her album, making the name an ironic one, when “they cut me off,” she told The Guardian.

“They just took my hard drive from me,” she said. “That was all. I just kept fucking everything up. I just kept moving shit around. I was choosing from 150, 200 songs, so I’m just like, who knows what’s good any more?”

One of the reasons SZA was taking so long on the album was her songwriting process.

“I freestyle everything, all the way down,” she said. “And I listen back and think, what’s shitty? And if something’s too shitty and I can’t put my finger on it, and I think, wow this sucks to me, then I get way frustrated, and usually scrap the song.”

With the taking of the hard drive, the label essentially big-brothered their way into positioning themselves to drop the album on their own accord. It’s not clear who exactly took the hard drive, but SZA went into the studio one day and it was just gone from the safe.

If operating on her own time, she said the album she would have released would “absolutely not” be the 14-track Ctrl we know today.

“Give me another month and it would have been something completely different,” she said.

But she promised not to cry over spilled milk in her hit “Love Galore,” so she seems to be doing alright. Case-in-point, she’s already writing more songs and should have a second album out pretty soon.

“I have less anxiety about the things that hindered me putting [Ctrl] out, so I’ll probably be done in the next six months,” she said.

For SZA’s next album, she wants the lyrics to look outward rather than inward, which is what Ctrl did, saying she wants to write about “The woorrrrld.”

Meanwhile, she just dropped a video for Ctrl lover-spurned, “temporary love” gem, “Supermodel,” today, in which she high-heels her way through a forest before blasting fireworks from her hands at a dude’s feet. Check it out below via Apple Music.