Days before the long-awaited release of SZA’s second album, the singer replied to a fan asking when she’d collaborate with Paramore’s Hayley Williams. “I talk to her more than you’d think lol,†SZA tweeted. (Of course she does — Paramore has professed love for her in the past, and their cover of “20 Something†even caught SZA’s eye.) Sadly, there’s no Hayley duet among the 23 tracks of SOS, but there is the next best thing: a SZA rock song.
“F2F†arrives halfway through the album like whiplash. The first verse is a fake-out with SZA singing over acoustic strums before the electric guitars come crashing in. It’s a perfect punctuation for the chorus, which features one of the most quotable lines on an album full of them: “I fuck him ’cause I miss you.†Yet as straightforward a rock endeavor as this is — falling somewhere between Avril Lavigne, Everclear, and Ashlee Simpson — it’s not basic pastiche. Just listen to its detailed touches, like the way the riffs drop in and out of the second hook or how SZA extends the final line of the song with an ad-lib, as if she were squeezing out her last drops of energy at a live show.
In true emo tradition, “F2F†turns into one of the angriest and saddest cuts off SOS. “I hate me enough for the two of us,†she declares in the chorus. Raw, candid writing isn’t new for SZA; it’s what made the previous album, Ctrl, such a breakout and one of the high marks of the confessional R&B of the past decade. But in pairing it with rock on “F2F,†she’s using the cathartic power of the genre in the same way as other young musicians who’ve turned to it over the past few years. (It may not make much sense at first why Lizzo has a writing credit on “F2F†until you remember that, before she signed to Atlantic, she was making similarly adventurous, brash music on her 2014 album, Lizzobangers.)
As a listener, SZA has long ventured well outside R&B, as inspired by Joni Mitchell or the Red Hot Chili Peppers as she is by Lauryn Hill. (Really, some fans may be surprised that “F2F†is SOS’s hardest-rocking track on rather than “Ghost in the Machine,†which features Phoebe Bridgers, the toast of indie rock. But “Ghost†is its own shock, diving into dark bedroom pop à la Billie Eilish.) To hear her making a rock song now is its own statement: that despite the five-year wait after Ctrl, she still knows exactly who she wants to be and can still challenge expectations in the process of showing us. Now all she needs is that Paramore remix.