Ctrl is released

Why it matters

Ctrl came out June 9, 2017, on Top Dawg/RCA. SZA (Solána Imani Rowe) is an R&B singer-songwriter who had been on TDE since 2013 and had released a handful of EPs before this. Ctrl is her debut album. It sold 60,000 copies in its first week, debuted at #3 on the Billboard 200, and would, over the next several years, become one of the most-streamed R&B albums of the late 2010s. Ctrl is not, strictly, a rap album, but it sits inside the broader 2010s TDE ecosystem with Kendrick and ScHoolboy Q and Ab-Soul and was treated by the rap-press conversation as part of that ecosystem. The writing on the album is autobiographical, often confessional, about relationships and self-worth and ambition. "Love Galore" with Travis Scott, "The Weekend," "Drew Barrymore," "Garden (Say It Like Dat)," "Broken Clocks." The album was widely treated, by R&B critics and rap critics alike, as one of the most distinctive vocal-and-songwriting debuts of the late 2010s. SZA would, by 2022's SOS, become one of the dominant R&B artists in the world. Ctrl is the album where she announced. You should hear it.