TDE stays winning. SZA, the recent addition to their roster (along with Isaiah Rashad), teams up with 50 Cent for “Teen Spirit”. Although I liked 50’s maturity on this track, it was SZA who really captured my heart. The dreamy beat gently complements SZA’s dreamy, melancholic crooning while 50’s presence anchors her meandering and lost soul. The video also explores this concept, with SZA drifting through a dilapidated, empty house that symbolizes her life. She is almost completely dependent on a dominating male figure to provide her life with some meaning or context and she hates herself and everyone because of this and inevitably pushes them away. She clings on to her childhood/simpler times (shown by the Nerf gun scene in the bathtub). She puts on many different fronts hoping that someone will accept one of them but beneath the veneers is just a cold emptiness.
Modern relationships in a nutshell. What y’all think?
