Wikipedia:Today's featured article/November 8, 2023

"Smoking on My Ex Pack" is a song by American singer-songwriter SZA (pictured) from her second studio album, SOS (2022). It is one of the album's three rap tracks, built around hard-hitting drums and a sped-up sample of a 1980s ballad. Before the album's release, SZA was viewed as an R&B artist who made melancholic music aimed at a female audience, or "sad girl music". Disillusioned, she conceived "Smoking on My Ex Pack", among other songs, to combat such narratives, which she believed was stereotyping of her as a Black woman. With the track, she experimented with more lyrically and sonically aggressive music, making a foray into hip hop. "Smoking on My Ex Pack" speaks positively of her own sex appeal and negatively of her ex-lovers, reveling in SZA's braggadocious, taunting persona: one lover has his penis ridiculed. Critics were positive about the new sound, and they deemed the lyrics candid and scathing enough that she had the potential to become a fully fledged rapper.