SZA Promises New Music ‘Before the Year is Over’

SZA season is upon us, according to the artist herself.

The four-time Grammy Award-winner has confirmed that fans will be hearing new music before the year is out, sharing the news as part of a recent appearance on Kai Cenat’s livestream alongside fellow guest Lizzo.

Letting slip that a “whole new project” was up her sleeves, Cenat pushed for a potential release date before SZA slyly admitted it “will be out before the year is over”.

If true, it would be the second time that SZA has shared a major release in the final stretch of the year. In 2022, her second album SOS arrived on Dec. 9, and was in swift contention for one of the albums of the year.

The record debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart with 318,000 equivalent album units – the third-highest debut week of 2022 – and shattered the record for the biggest streaming week for an R&B album by a woman, with 404.6 million official on-demand streams for the album’s songs, according to Luminate. It spent 10 total weeks atop the chart, and became the first R&B album by a woman to hit the double-digit mark since Mariah Carey’s self-titled debut posted 11 weeks at No. 1 in 1991.

SZA’s admission also gels with her recent interview with British Vogue where she revealed that she had two projects ready to arrive, though no release dates were revealed. Per the publication, SZA was readying both a deluxe version of SOS and her third studio album, Lana – the latter of which had initially been announced as the former.

“I think I am making music from a more beautiful place. From a more possible place versus a more angsty place,” she told the publication. “I’m not identifying with my brokenness. It’s not my identity. It’s shit that happened to me. Yeah, I experienced cruelty. I have to put it down at some point. Piece by piece, my music is shifting because of that, the lighter I get.”