SZA Says She Has Two Projects Coming, Including Her New Album ‘Lana’

SZA’s back.

After taking over the music scene with her record-breaking sophomore album, SOS, in December 2022, the 35-year-old star has maintained a relatively low profile since. In a new British Vogue interview, she’s ready to return to the music scene, revealing that she has not one, but two releases up her sleeves.

According to the publication, both the deluxe version of SOS and her third studio album, Lana, are on the way. “I think I am making music from a more beautiful place. From a more possible place versus a more angsty place,” she explained. “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.”

Elsewhere in the story, her TDE label mate Kendrick Lamar praised her creative openness. “I recognize a more expressive SZA. The shy s— is completely out the window – to a degree, at least,” he said. “She has the answers to some of the things she was curious about and is willing to tell it all in the most disruptive yet beautiful compositions this generation has ever heard.”

Following its release, SOS 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.

The album’s longstanding hit single, “Kill Bill,” dominated on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, racking up 21 weeks at No. 1, surpassing the 20-week run of Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road,” featuring Billy Ray Cyrus, as the song with the most weeks at No. 1 on the chart since it became an all-encompassing genre survey in 1958. 

At the 2023 Grammy Awards, she led the nominees with nine nods, and ended up taking home three awards. SOS won best progressive R&B album, “Snooze” snagged best R&B song and her Phoebe Bridgers collaboration, “Ghost in the Machine,” won best pop duo/group performance.