SZA

Born in St. Louis and raised in Maplewood, NJ, genre-defying, and GRAMMY Award winning recording artist SZA released her major label debut album Ctrl in 2017. It landed at No. 1 on Billboard’s R&B Albums chart, No. 2 on the R&B/Hip Hop Albums chart and No. 3 on the Billboard 200 chart. The now RIAA-certified 3x Platinum album received five Grammy nominations in 2018 and more than half of its tracks are currently certified multi-Platinum and Gold. Ctrl remains on the Top 200 chart since its release and holds the record for the longest run for any Black female artist’s debut album. In 2022 alone, it sold over 600,000 units and is the 10th best-selling female album this year in the country and 50th best-selling album in 2022 overall.

SZA has won various awards since the release of Ctrl, including a 2022 GRAMMY Award for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance for “Kiss Me More” with Doja Cat, Billboard Music Awards’ Top R&B Female Artist, BET Awards’ Best New Artist, BET Soul Train Awards’ Best R&B/Soul Female Artist and Best New Artist, MTV Video Music Awards’ Best Visual Effects for the “All The Stars” with Kendrick Lamar, and NAACP Image Awards’ Outstanding New Artist. In 2019, she won the NAACP Image Awards’ Outstanding Duo or Group for “All The Stars” with Kendrick Lamar and Outstanding Soundtrack/Compilation for the Black Panther Soundtrack. SZA also received Billboard’s 2019 Women in Music Rule Breaker award.

In 2020, SZA released the hypnotic track “Hit Different” featuring Ty Dolla $ign along with the stunning visual that took the internet by storm. That Christmas, SZA gifted fans with the hopeful track “Good Days,” followed by a trippy visual released in March. Grammy-nominated for Best R&B Song, the single quickly became SZA’s greatest gainer solo single release, peaking at #9 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and marking her first time in the chart’s top ten as the main artist. December 2021, SZA scored her second lead artist top 10 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart with the official release of “I Hate U,” which debuted at #7. The song also entered at #1 on both Spotify and Apple Music US charts and broke the record for the most streamed R&B song by a female artist on Apple Music in its first week. “Shirt”, featured on her new album SOS, has garnered over 60 million streams globally since its release in October. Her latest singles are "Nobody Gets Me" and "Kill Bill".

To this day, SZA continues to set the standard for creativity and songwriting, while shattering records with over 7.2 billion streams worldwide across all platforms. Photo credit: Jacob Webster

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