A Love Letter to SZA and All Carefree Black Girls Alike
BY DANIELLE NCUBE
This year has really been one where I felt like I just loved and celebrated and surrounded myself with black girls and women. Of different sizes and shades ad styles, of everything and anything. And I loved each and every one of them. I’ve indulged completely in black womanhood, and wow is it amazing. And although there’s been so many artists creating the soundtrack behind all this, the one I can’t help but adore is SZA. A truly carefree, for-herself, black girl. This piece is a celebration of her and all the black girls around me I’m obsessed with.
SZA is stunning. One of the most beautiful women right now (maybe ever). Her big natural hair almost makes me want to grow mine out. And I didn’t even like tie-dye until she made it hot and cool and fresh, until she practically re-invented it. I know now that reason why I didn’t like tie dye was because no one has literally ever worn it as well as her. Even before her weight loss I thought she was just something absolutely lovely to look at. And her freckles – which mind, I’d never seen on a dark skin girl – and her edgy, experimental style. SZA was the “it girl” I felt that the universe had made for me. I was, am, obsessed with her ‘difference’, the ‘uniqueness’ of her look, her energy. She looked like the black girl I felt I was. Awkwardly odd, relaxed and tomboyish, a girl who wasn’t too confident in the ‘girl look’ but who admired it anyway. A girl still figuring out how she liked herself.
And it’s here that I want to reach out to every black girl reading this. And tell them that they’re just as beautiful and intriguing and compelling, simply because they are. In seeing SZA’s beauty, I hope they see their own. The complexity and range within blackness is what makes it special, and all its intricacies exist within you too. Through SZA’s music, I saw the importance of representation and the black community. It was in communion with other black girls that I could figure out how I liked myself, my hair, my clothes, my voice, music, art, blackness. It’s this community I run to when I need to be myself completely, even for a short while, when I need to escape politics and intersectionality and reality. It’s a place to be honestly me.
Discovering SZA’s music was like finding a hidden gem of a restaurant. I was dying to tell everyone about her but I also wanted to keep her all for myself. Through her music felt like I truly saw black girlhood, and like someone had finally seen me. Ctrl is the perfect album. In it, SZA is me and SZA is speaking to me. She’s sexually liberated, she’s honest, she’s vulnerable, she’s sensitive, she’s needy, she’s self-assured, she’s fun. She’s herself fully, looking not to be smaller for someone else but to find someone who lets her be bigger. She’s speaking to me, and every black girl ever saying ‘yeah, I felt that. But it’s okay, I’m better for it anyway’. She’s Julia and Drew Barrymore and Gina. She’s a big sister, a friend, a cousin. She’s me, she’s you. And fuck, if that isn’t powerful.
SZA’s journey of self-discovery through spirituality is so comforting. A truly carefree black girl, who wants to explore the world through a lens that’s outside the mainstream. It’s yoga and healing bowls and journaling and Chi. And she’s okay with it. She’s okay with her Muslim upbringing and she’s honest in her own ideas and she’s open to others too. Her peacefulness comes from her peace in herself and her place in the world.
And this isn’t to shame the girl that’s still not too sure. Who doesn’t quite know where she belongs. Who’s still figuring out how to like her hair, and her skin and her family and her awkwardness. No, take this as more of a comfort, more of a reminder; that it’s a journey. Not only is it a journey but you, black girl, are not one thing. And are not supposed to be one thing forever. You’re supposed to be vulnerable and dependent and self-assured and fun, you’re supposed to be human. Because the beauty in SZA and the beauty in the carefree black girl is that she doesn’t try to force the future, instead she takes time to be and be fully.
So please, keep being you. you, black girl, are in ctrl.