SZA expressed major discontent with her record label, Top Dawg Entertainment, on Monday by saying that she’s finished with the music industry after the prolonged delay of her debut album, A.
The 25-year-old singer-songwriter pulled a Lil Wayne and called out Terrence “Punch” Henderson, the co-president of TDE, who is apparently holding the album hostage. “I actually quit. [Punch] can release my album if he ever feels like it,” SZA said on Twitter, in now-deleted tweets. “Y’all be blessed.”
Instead of responding directly to the only female artist signed to his label, Punch tweeted an image of The Joker laughing maniacally along with “Lol.” as the caption.
In February, Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith hinted that the label would release SZA’s latest project in 2016. Top posted an image of a whiteboard to his Instagram that displayed the different stages his artists’ albums were at. SZA’s latest project was listed in between what would become SchoolBoy Q’s Blank Face and Isaiah Rashad’s The Sun’s Tirade; both projects were released in July and September, respectively.
Meanwhile, SZA has shared several tentative release dates over the course of the year. In May, she said that the album would drop while everyone was still wearing bathing suits, and in September, announced that it would drop on her birthday, November 8, which is still more than one month away.
While the release date for A might remain uncertain, we do know that SZA’s debut record will be incredibly personal and feature her TDE labelmates Kendrick Lamar, Q, Rashad, Jay Rock, and Ab-Soul.
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“This album is just straight up laying everything to bed. I’m talking a lot of grimy sh-t, but it’s truth. I’m exposing a lot of skeletons of mine, things that were tough to talk about and tough to even accept were happening,” she previously told Entertainment Weekly.
“I feel like when you make your discomfort available to everyone else, it allows everyone to deal with the discomfort. Right now we’re in such a state as Americans, as a society, that we don’t want to deal with anything that’s uncomfortable. We don’t want to deal with any of our ugliness. I’m just getting ugly. All my dirty laundry is on the line.”