“I don’t listen to my own music, so to me, it’s awesome that people really like it. I was afraid that it wouldn’t connect with everyone. I’m more appreciative than anything. SZA”

I was born in St. Louis, but I’m from Maplewood, New Jersey. Maplewood is completely different than the rest of New Jersey. It’s very small. It’s quietly affluent but more low-key. Lauryn Hill is from my town, though.

Music is my form of cleansing and introspection, so I have to grow in order to accomplish it. SZA

Every day I pray to see myself the way God and others see me.

Your energy told me what your mouth couldn’t.

I just make music however I feel and pray that it connects, and if it does, I’m super thankful. I think genres are more for other people, not for yourself.

I don’t enjoy being interviewed. I feel like it exhausts a lot of my energy. I feel empty after.

Pain plus love and time = power.

I don’t have a background in music, and I have a short attention span. If you put me in the studio every day, I’m gonna get lost.

People grapple with labeling me as hip-hop, R&B, or pop, and it’s interesting to me. I’m just making music.

Don’t get discouraged with your skin when it doesn’t do what you want it to do, Give it some time. That’s the only way to get to know yourself.

I think music is honest and will make you do honest things.

I’m very into details, so I watch movies just for the details.

I don’t think I’m inherently feminist. I think the universe wants me to be a feminist, and I think I resonate with that. I think it just chose me to be this female energy, thing. And I’m very drawn to female energy, but I don’t really have any prerequisites in feminism. I just roll with it.

When your parents regulate everything you hear and everything you intake, it forces you to get creative in other ways. It sparked the writing bug and the very overactive imagination. Because I’ve had a lot of time by myself and a lot of time isolated from regular culture, I created my own.

Every day I grapple between ‘I’m going to get married’ and ‘I’m going to spend the rest of my life alone with a poodle.’

I went through this phase of Spandex, high heels, and fur coats when I was in my late teens and early twenties; before then, I lived in overalls and baggy T-shirts.