SZA recorded between 150 and 200 songs for her debut album, but crippling anxiety left her unable to finalize a track list, so her label TDE confiscated her hard drive to force its release. Born from that loss of control, Ctrl became a generational R&B masterpiece that has spent 400 weeks on the Billboard 200.

This episode covers her signing to TDE, her pivot to songwriting for Beyonce and Rihanna, and the anxiety that nearly made her quit music. It examines Rick Rubin’s advice to strip away the reverb, the intimate confessional tracks, the concept of control woven through the record, and the deluxe edition that finally shared songs from those sessions.

• Why the label confiscated her hard drive to force the album out
• Rick Rubin’s advice to strip away the wall of sound and get vulnerable
• The freestyled, diary-like writing behind tracks like Supermodel
• Why The Weekend is more than a side-chick anthem
• The album’s 400-week chart run and the 2022 deluxe edition