The Long Road to ‘Lana’: Why SZA Took Two Years to Drop the ‘SOS’ Deluxe Album

variety.com:

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music In most cases, deluxe albums are intended as a chart-focused second wind for their parent albums, and usually have just a handful of extra tracks — remixes, leftovers, maybe a hot new single to give an extra boost — while the artist is saving the more-promising new material for their next proper album.

Not SZA. “Lana” — the title for the long-delayed deluxe edition of her 2022 blockbuster “SOS,” which finally dropped on Friday afternoon — has had a long and convoluted history, morphing and changing every step of the way over the two years since she first began talking about it, shortly after the release of the parent album.

Why? Because SZA is that kind of artist: a perfectionist whose work isn’t ready until she feels it’s ready. That’s a major reason why she gets so angry when her unfinished or unreleased material leaks. “When people leak my songs, they ruin them,” she told Variety in her Hitmaker of the Year cover interview last year. “Then it’s not mine anymore; it’s actually yours.

It’s something unfinished that you decided was ready to be shared. And it’s like, ‘Fuck you. Now I’m not releasing it.’ Play your leak, but you’re not gonna bully me into dropping music.