SZA, Variety’s Hitmaker of the Year, Unpacks ‘SOS,’ Her 9 Grammy Noms, and Says ‘F— You’ to Song Leakers

variety.com:

SZA is vigorously scrolling. “I never have topics before I start a song,” she says about her creative process, late one August night, high in the hills of Malibu, while zipping through months of memos and voice notes on her phone. “I just let the beat tell me what to do, and then I start babbling and making words, and it starts to form itself.

It’s like a puzzle. Sometimes I write down phrases, but I never go back to those — even though they’re always good-ass phrases!” Her forefinger flies across her phone. “They go back years and years and years.

It’s all music and random bounces and writing… “Oh, shit!” she exclaims, suddenly pointing to the screen. “It’s ‘Kill Bill’!” — her song that just happens to be the No.

2 charting single of the year. “This is literally ‘Kill Bill,’ the day that I wrote it: July 13, 2022 … at 10:26 p.m.!” To a degree rare even for a musician, SZA’s art is inseparable from the rest of her.