SZA has a clear message for her fans: keep doing you, regardless of what the haters have to say. Today (June 17), the singer took a moment out to acknowledge her own success.
In a tweet, she wrote, “The net is not real. N**gas said my tour would never sell, and we were blessed. N**gas said my album wouldn’t do well, it’s wack, blah, blah. We were blessed. N**gas say a lot. That’s they job. [You] keep doing yours and being who God told [you] to be in real life. Love y’all.”
SZA followed up with another tweet to clarify just how “blessed” she has been this year: “And by blessed, I mean a double-platinum album and sold-out shows all over the world. I really believed [people] ’cause they were loud. Turns out n**gas be loud [and] wrong every day lol.” The songstress released her second album, SOS, on Dec. 9, 2022, after a five-year hiatus from her debut, Ctrl, which came out in June 2017.
A week after the newest LP dropped, SZA revealed that she was stunned by fans’ positive reception of the project. “I never thought in a million years that people would like it,” she said on the “Rolling Stone Music Now” podcast. “My dad’s visiting right now with my mom. Everybody came down to make sure I didn’t lose my mind if the album went bad once it came out. And now we’re just hanging out ’cause it didn’t go badly!” In its first week, SOS topped the Billboard 200 chart, a first in her career, and sold more than 300,000 albums.
By February, the project had been certified platinum by the RIAA. And two months later, she crossed over the two-million threshold, securing its status as double platinum. Records like “Shirt,” “Kill Bill,” Good Days,” “Low,” and a few others have also earned platinum designations, further cementing the success of the project. In February, she embarked on her first sold-out arena tour, which saw her perform 17 concerts across the country. According to Billboard, she raked in over $34.5 million in ticket sales.
Earlier this week, it was announced that SZA and Lizzo will be co-headlining the Made in America Festival over Labor Day weekend.