The sultry songstress of TDE has been on the move as of late. SZA recently performed in Brooklyn with Willow Smith, she’s crooned the crowd at the Pitchfork Music Festival, and so much more. As her success continues to sore, we’re finding out more and more on the, “Julia” singer, such as her skill for directing and her love for late 90s cartoon, Pepper Ann (that was my s**t).

“Oh now she was the shit, the shit. She was so dope. Her hair was everything,” SZA mentions. “People always say it’s important to live in the present, but I think I live in nostalgia. It’s really all over Z. I don’t know what I was doing all this time but I don’t know, I lived my life as a child but it doesn’t feel like I was really there,” she continues. It’s all in the past – where she pulls most of her inspiration from and for fans, surely that’s a great thing.

Check down bottom for more on the female Top Dawg.

JaaiR (JR)

You recently released a new video for “Julia.” How much creative control do you exercise over your videos?
Oh my god, so much! I’m obsessed. By the end, everyone hates me. But it sucks because in the middle I’m always thinking, “Damn, am I going to ruin this relationship or am I going to have a shitty video?” But in the end, when the video comes out cool, everyone’s happier that way. I go in and make people re-edit the whole video, change the color correction, bring up a different filter, or all this other stuff. I have to time-code everything myself.

When it comes to videos, I think the song and video should be separate entities. The video should tell its own story and the song should tell its own story, but they should compliment each other, not dictate each other, and that’s what I try to do. Julia was the first video I didn’t completely direct myself…

Wait, you directed Babylon yourself?
Yeah!

Are you serious? That’s so crazy!
Ahh, thank you! My father was in film for 30 years, so I’ve grown up around it and guess I’ve caught the bug! It’s something that I’m really into, something that no one really knows but that I’m really interested in and enjoy.

I know you’re a fan of Fade to Mind, King Krule, Crystal Castles, and I heard you soundchecking Fleetwood Mac! If you could collaborate with anyone, living or dead, who would you chose and why?
I can’t pick just one! Prince, I love King Krule, Sade would be nuts, Jamiroquai would be nuts, Bjork would be dream status. Like you could bury me after that, you could just bury me. I would quit music. That’s the apex. I should stop there.

What do you want to be remembered for?
I want to be remembered for successfully pioneering the way people see something or what they’re introduced to, because I feel like a lot of that is separated by demographic or class and all that kind of shit. But I feel like there’s a lot of blending of classes and space when it comes to me. Whether it’s me wearing a dirty jersey in Vogue with no hair or makeup team or I’m doing a song with Jill Scott on HypeBeast and HypeTrack, in both circumstances, those worlds don’t really go together. And I think that’s kind of tight. I enjoy that, I want to keep doing that. I want to keep bringing things to people of colour that they’re not used to, sounds that they’re not used to. I want to be remembered for culture splicing, but successfully!

SOURCE: i-D