SZA has claimed that her Rihanna collaboration “Consideration” was taken from her when she wanted to keep it for herself.
During an interview with Variety, the TDE singer admitted she was “so frustrated” when her label gave the track to RiRi because she had intended for it to be the “centerpiece” of her debut album Ctrl.
AD LOADING...
“I cared so much,” she said. “I was so frustrated and I felt like, ‘I’ll never have anything this cool again. I’ll never make anything this cool again.’
“And that was so crazy, ’cause it was like the centerpiece to my album at the time. And for her, it was just like part of her album. And I was like, ‘Please, no!’ I had just shot a video for it and I was about to drop it in a couple of days.”
AD LOADING...
She added: “It was already done, that conversation. Like label-wise, it was already done. So it was just a matter of accepting, and in hindsight, it was so hard to go and accept.”
Despite her disappointment at the time, SZA is able to look back at the situation positively following the success of the collaboration.
AD LOADING...
“But now, it’s like, I’m so glad that that happened, and that it didn’t cost me anything,” she said. “If anything, I just gained a bunch from it. And I thank God that I made cool music outside of that.
“Again, and I don’t know why, I just really thought my creativity would just stop and this was the pinnacle of what I could make. ‘If she has it, then I’ll just never be anything.'”
Listen to her comments at the 3:00 mark below.
Produced by Scum and Kuk Harrell, “Consideration” appeared as the opening track on Rihanna’s Anti album, which was released in January 2016.
SZA previously said the song reminded her of both the 1995 movie Dangerous Minds and 2010’s Insidious.
“Rihanna’s ‘Consideration’ reminded me of Dangerous Minds, because that’s what that beat sounded like to me,” she told Teen Vogue. “That’s what I was thinking about and feeling in life when I first heard it, mixed with the yodeling from Insidious.”
SZA also called it a “blessing” to work with Rihanna during a separate interview with HuffPost in 2016.
AD LOADING...
“It was definitely just a random blessing,” she said. “I made a song [Rihanna] connected to, and it just happened. She was super humble, just about everything. So it was really like, just a warm moment.”
Revisit “Consideration” below.
