Though she didn’t win, she still shifted the culture: Since debuting at No. 3 on the Billboard 200, Ctrl hasn’t left, spending 281 consecutive weeks on the chart (through the Nov. 5 edition). Not only did she give a legion of awkward Black girls like me a realistic role model - she also struck a chord with the Recording Academy, becoming the most nominated woman at the 2018 Grammy Awards with five nods, including for best new artist. On its cover, the album showed SZA just as she was (and still is): a charismatic, laid-back girl with big curly hair who dressed just as she pleased in a track jacket, bodysuit and tube socks. And lyrically, it was the kind of ultra-relatable songwriting that young people from all walks of life needed: SZA chronicled familiar coming-of-age quandaries, like wondering if your significant other believes you’re enough, or debating if being normal would benefit your relationships, or, well, questioning everything else life throws at you in your 20s. Sonically, it was the kind of music SZA had always wanted to hear growing up but never quite found outside of herself - an abstract form of R&B influenced by indie and trap music and shaped by lo-fi beats. When SZA released Ctrl on June 9, 2017, on RCA and TDE, she immediately established herself as alternative R&B’s girl next door and one of the most exciting new voices in music. Unlike this night in Austin, though, getting that album out has been far from all fun and games.

Terrence “Punch” Henderson, SZA’s manager and president of her label, Top Dawg Entertainment (TDE), played “at least 4 songs off the new album on the loud speakers,” she tweeted the following morning. Altitude Trampoline Park, which bills itself as the “world’s best trampoline park,” also might not be where you’d expect to hear a preview of what RCA Records chairman/CEO Peter Edge calls “one of the most important albums of the year.” But on this particular evening, for any attendees listening closely, it was.

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