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Sep 26, 2023From start to finish, CTRL os nothing less than outstanding - the late arrival of a very important artist.
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Jun 16, 2017Ctrl is as tough as Damn is tender, and it knocks as hard as The Sun’s Tirade swoons.
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Dec 14, 2017In Ctrl, SZA draws on her personal experience and explores women’s sexuality in a direct and honest way which was so far mostly reserved to male R&B and pop artists.
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Jun 13, 2017SZA is the full package in terms of artistry: killer singing and songwriting abilities with a distinct perspective on life, love and destiny. CTRL is craft in action, a uniquely excellent album from a uniquely excellent artist.
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Jul 25, 2017On Ctrl, SZA proves that you can be confident yet insecure, sexual yet crave affection and genuine connection, and empowered and still prone to falling for bad boys and all the drama that entails. SZA is the real deal and yet another example of how some of the most interesting, complex, sophisticated art being made today is being made by R&B artists.
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Jun 13, 2017She is in touch with love’s fragilities and understands that it is worth protecting, there is just a lot of tireless work to get it. The record is all the more beautiful for it.
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Jun 22, 2017With Ctrl, SZA proves that the cult following that ballooned with the release of her 2014 mixtape, Z, was not some flash in the pan, but a deserved wellspring of attention from an adoring fan base whose faith in what she had yet to produce helped to produce the project that could eventually stand as the best thing she has ever done.
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Jul 20, 2017It’s an album that genuinely feels like SZA’s singular vision, which is eye-opening for those who may be more familiar with the New Jersey singer as a guest vocalist.
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Jul 19, 2017Ctrl is a languid, cavernously soulful debut that is never anything but assured--a collection of delicious jams that are equal parts fragile, cozy and piercing.
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Jul 19, 2017Placed beside only Z, its three-year-old prelude, Ctrl is the work of a considerably less-inhibited songwriter. Rowe likewise truly fronts these frank songs that wield power as they lament lonesomeness, insecurity, and inertia.
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Jun 28, 2017Featuring savage and often heartfelt, diary-like ruminations, CTRL pushes against the borders of convention lyrically and sonically, placing it on the upper echelons of potential ‘Best Of ’17’ lists.
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Jun 15, 2017Ctrl’s strength is how it doesn’t strive to be one thing over the other. It effortlessly winds between narratives and genres like it’s child’s play. This isn’t a star in the making, it’s a fully-fledged talent who’s practically showing off.
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Jun 14, 2017The music is equal parts aching, brazen and gorgeously honest.
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Jun 13, 2017She fully commands the foreground of her songs. Her voice is upfront, recorded to sound natural and unaffected, with all its grain and conversational quirks.
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Jun 13, 2017Languid and soulful, the debut album from New Jersey singer SZA is an immersive dreamscape, book-ended poignantly with her mother’s musings on the subject of control.
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Jun 13, 2017What’s remarkable about it is that she has spun her personal experiences into a soulful, touching R&B record with broad appeal beyond her particular demographic.
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Sep 26, 2023Ctrl is a Facebook-photo album of opinions and behaviours that probably shouldn’t be broadcasted online. It’s also an assembly of tracks that prevail as mantras of self-affirmation, and it balances the two sides of its character with an awareness that feels like an accident, though it's welcomed all the same. But even if we disregard what it all means, these tracks are still jams, tunes, or any other blasé term people attach to music that you can throw away your dignity to.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 535 out of 570
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Mixed: 16 out of 570
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Negative: 19 out of 570
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Jun 13, 2017
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Oct 2, 2018One of the best R&B albums of the decade. Excited to hear more of her work in the future.
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Apr 24, 2018