Solana Imani Rowe's first full album as SZA took awhile to come together, but definitely not due to a lack of material: she'd reportedly logged somewhere between 150 and 200 songs before her handlers at Top Dawg Entertainment finally walked away with her hard drive and demanded she lock a final track listing down.

CTRL, released in the spring of 2017, turned out juuuuust fine. It sold bucketloads, got SZA nominated for a Grammy for Best New Artist, earned her comparisons to Amy Winehouse and Billie Holiday and spawned five platinum-certified singles: "Drew Barrymore," "Love Galore," "The Weekend," "Broken Clocks" and "Garden (Say It Like Dat)." Maybe her oft-lamented anxiety and crippling self-criticism works to SZA's advantage, after all. And in any case, CTRL was a breath of fresh in the realm of "hip-hop soul" not experienced since the rise of Mary J. Blige and Lauryn Hill.