This fall, when we chose her for the cover of Rolling Stone’s Grammy Preview issue, we saw the ingenuity, creativity, and bravery that made SOS so special in a crowded field: “I’m here to do better all the time, and maybe better than you if I have to,” she told us, “because that’s just the way I’m built.”- M.C. “Smoking on My Ex Pack” earns her the Wu-Tang reference of her stage name. If “F2F” came out in 2004 and misogynoir wasn’t a thing, it would have had her headlining Warped Tour. “Snooze” is easily one of the best R&B songs of this century. Who else could sing “You were balls deep, now we beefin’” as the second line of an acoustic-guitar ballad? The album moves from peak to peak. Back in high school, I used to bus it to the dance (Yeah) Now I hit the FBO with duffels in my hands. On SOS, SZA seamlessly contorts disparate genres around her raw emotion and gifted verbiage with the sense of control she pined for on her first record. Chorus: Drake & Travis Scott She's in love with who I am. The album came out in December, 2022, after we’d published our 2022 list, but it made its mark in 2023, riding high on the charts all year (including a record-breaking 10 weeks at Number One), dominating the cultural conversation on a level no 2023 release could compare with, and earning nine Grammy nominations. She rocks! She raps! She takes rumors and rumblings about herself head on! But its staying power outshone its shock value. Her second LP was cunning and full of surprises. If there was ever any doubt that SZA was a key voice in her generation (which the five years since her 2017 debut, Ctrl, could very well have sown), SOS decimated it. They all gave us music to live in, and records that will be resonating long after this year is out. Eazi, to breakout country hero Megan Moroney. With a few noted exceptions (including Miley Cyrus, Drake, and the, um, Rolling Stones), this wasn’t a huge year for blockbuster releases by mega-stars, but that only made more room for newer innovators - from sci-fi-reggaeton mastermind Tainy, to Afrobeats greats like Asake, Burna Boy, and Mr. Paramore raged back Victoria Monet led an R&B resurgence Mitski reimagined the American gothic. Underground rapper Billy Woods and beatmaker Kenny Segal teamed up and went deep. Zach Bryan released an album of deeply personal songs that subverted country-bro masculinity (and still packed arenas). Lil Yachty traded in his boat for a space cruiser. Boygenius blew first-album expectations out of the water. Olivia Rodrigo proved the truth-bomb punk-pop of her 2021 Sour was no fluke. In 2023, must-hear albums kept piling up at an insane rate.
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