Long before unveiling her long-awaited sophomore album, the artist behind SOS built a creative practice centered on rejecting the limits the music industry often places on pop performers, refusing to trim the jagged edges of her truth to fit a narrow, marketable mold. Every project she released leading up to her second full-length effort chipped away at those boundaries, weaving together unexpected sonic influences and unflinchingly honest storytelling that made her work feel like a lifeline for listeners who had never seen their own messy, unpolished feelings reflected in mainstream pop. That work reached its most ambitious culmination with SOS, a sprawling epic that pulls from R&B, grunge, pop, and hip-hop to capture the full spectrum of human emotion, from the searing anger of a betrayal to the soft vulnerability of unrequited desire, the quiet insecurity of feeling unworthy to the fierce triumph of unapologetic self-assertion.