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Must We Demand This Much Music From Artists?
SZA’s SOS Deluxe: Lana reinforces how much stronger the original is.
Fifteen songs arrived ahead of Christmas alongside tales of an exhausted engineer, with more music and an adjusted mix promised this month (the night before the refresh date, TDE president Terrence “Punch” Henderson said sample clearances were still being resolved). You sometimes sense that she views the world through the lens of having been counted out before, that the devil on her shoulder isn’t urging evil acts (“Kill Bill” notwithstanding) but suggesting that she doesn’t deserve to be an avenging potential voice of a generation blurting out the uncomfortable thoughts listeners bottle up. Sometimes this dynamic tension is daring and delicious: Percussive phrasings punctuate the low post-Dilla boom-bap of “Chill Baby” like thunder and lightning, and “Kitchen” coats a bit of the Isley Brothers’ “Voyage to Atlantis” in a light haze of tinny skronk and apparent sample-rate reduction, donning the aesthetic imperfections of a literally unearthed demo.
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