Yo team — SZA and Steve Lacy finally dropped their collab “Is It Cool?” after months of people predicting this on every music board I frequent. The reveal happened almost overnight around midnight when she tweeted out the track link alongside pictures with him in a red coat, and my feed became unreadable for like twenty minutes. People were genuinely shocked — you had everyone tweeting "I didn't know they weren't fighting," people digging up old Instagram posts from years ago to prove SZA has been listening since forever, and even some fan accounts making long threads about the history of their two styles colliding. It was one of those internet moments where half the reaction is pure chaos-posting because everyone loves both artists intensely enough that any overlap feels like a cultural event.
The best part is how they handled it when people started asking them about the collaboration later on, because neither of them played along with the drama rumors at all. Steve posted about his own recent album A Light Of My Own and just casually said "I've been listening to SZA since forever" in a way that felt entirely unprompted by any PR team — it was genuinely him being himself. SZA also put out a statement through Pitchfork saying she has always admired both of them as songwriters, claiming they write music the same way she does and that their connection is purely creative not at all dramatic. Pitchfork even compared this to one of those rare cross-genre pairings that actually makes sense because both artists share an aesthetic sensibility that blends indie sensibility with pop craft in a very specific way. So go listen — it's short but worth, and I know you guys will have thoughts about whether the SZA/Steve crossover belongs on your 2024 rotation or not.
Source: https://pitchfork.com/news/listen-to-steve-lacy-and-szas-duet-on-is-it-cool/
The best part is how they handled it when people started asking them about the collaboration later on, because neither of them played along with the drama rumors at all. Steve posted about his own recent album A Light Of My Own and just casually said "I've been listening to SZA since forever" in a way that felt entirely unprompted by any PR team — it was genuinely him being himself. SZA also put out a statement through Pitchfork saying she has always admired both of them as songwriters, claiming they write music the same way she does and that their connection is purely creative not at all dramatic. Pitchfork even compared this to one of those rare cross-genre pairings that actually makes sense because both artists share an aesthetic sensibility that blends indie sensibility with pop craft in a very specific way. So go listen — it's short but worth, and I know you guys will have thoughts about whether the SZA/Steve crossover belongs on your 2024 rotation or not.
Source: https://pitchfork.com/news/listen-to-steve-lacy-and-szas-duet-on-is-it-cool/