Seven Grammys. The highest-grossing co-headlining tour in history. A debut album she nearly never released. SZA is 36 and, by most measures, just getting started.
There is a version of SZA’s career that almost didn’t happen. Before she was the first woman to spend 100 weeks in the top ten of the Billboard 200, before she was pulling in Grammy wins and Super Bowl halftime spots alongside Kendrick Lamar, she was a bartender and a club dancer in New Jersey, self-releasing music that almost nobody heard. The label that eventually signed her heard her voice by accident, through a recording that happened to be playing when she was dropping off a clothing delivery. That’s the story. Make of it what you will.
What followed was not overnight. It was ten years of work, three albums, and a body of music that makes heartbreak and self-doubt sound like something worth sitting with.
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How old is SZA?
SZA was born on 8 November 1989, which makes her 36. She grew up in Maplewood, New Jersey, in an orthodox Muslim household – her mother was an AT&T executive, her father an executive producer at CNN. She attended a Muslim prep school alongside regular schooling, frequently wore a hijab, and by her own account felt like an outsider: one of the few Black students in a predominantly white community, and then, after the September 11 attacks in 2001, suddenly and additionally conspicuous. She dropped out of college, worked in clubs, and started making music.
What is SZA’s real name?
Her given name is Solána Imani Rowe. The stage name SZA – pronounced “Sizz-ah” – is an acronym drawn from the Supreme Alphabet, a system created by Clarence 13X, founder of the Five Percent Nation. As she has explained it: the S stands for Sovereign, Self, or Savior; the Z for Zig-Zag-Zig, meaning enlightenment and acknowledgment of oneself; and the A for the most high of all, a reference to Allah. She chose it to reflect her Muslim faith. She kept it because it is, among other things, completely unguessable.
On songwriting: SZA has described writing as a form of self-therapy. Because she finds it difficult to say kind things about herself directly, she sometimes writes from other people’s perspectives – including, on the 2025 track “Joni,” from the point of view of Joni Mitchell. It’s a workaround that happens to produce extraordinarily good music.
Is SZA queer? Her sexuality and personal life
SZA keeps her romantic life firmly off the record, but she hasn’t kept it entirely sealed. She has hinted in interviews at being attracted to both women and men, without ever applying a label to it. When a fan shared a TikTok that described her as a lesbian, her response was: “it’s not wrong lol.” Make of that what you will. She has not elaborated, and does not appear to feel she owes anyone an elaboration.
Beyond that, she has spoken openly about her emotional interior through her music – which covers heartbreak, desire, self-image, and the specific difficulty of loving people who are not quite ready to be loved back – but has not publicly confirmed relationships. What she has confirmed, repeatedly and in considerable lyrical detail, is that she has feelings.
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SZA’s discography: the albums explained
| Album | Year | Notable for |
|---|---|---|
| Ctrl | 2017 | Debut. US #3. Five Grammy nominations. Time’s best album of 2017. “Love Galore,” “The Weekend.” |
| SOS Grammy | 2022 | 23 tracks. First woman to spend 100 weeks in Billboard 200 top ten. “Kill Bill,” “Snooze.” |
| Lana / SOS Deluxe: Lana | 2024–25 | Deluxe reissues. “Saturn,” “Luther” (with Kendrick Lamar), “Joni.” Won Best R&B Song at the 2025 Grammys. |
Where did SZA come from? The early career explained.
She released two self-produced EPs – See.SZA.Run in 2012 and S in 2013 – before becoming the first female artist signed to Top Dawg Entertainment, the independent label that also represented Kendrick Lamar. Her TDE debut EP, Z, arrived in 2014, lo-fi and psychedelic and not especially concerned with being commercial. Her actual debut album, Ctrl, came three years later and announced something fully formed: a voice that could make vulnerability feel like a position of strength, and lyrics so specific they felt stolen from your own diary.
Ctrl was nominated for four Grammys. It was ranked the best album of 2017 by Time. It made SZA one of the most talked-about artists in R&B. And then she spent five years making her second album, during which time she released a string of collaborations and singles and quietly became, by most metrics, one of the most-streamed artists on the planet.
SOS and the record books
SOS, released in December 2022, was a 23-track statement that operated at a scale most artists don’t attempt. It topped the Billboard 200 and kept going – SZA became the first woman to spend 100 weeks in the chart’s top ten, and the album broke the record for the longest-running US top ten by a Black musician. Its fifth single, “Kill Bill,” reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and was the third best-selling song of 2023. “Snooze” won Best R&B Song at the 2024 Grammys. “Ghost in the Machine,” featuring Phoebe Bridgers, won Best Pop Duo/Group Performance. The album won Best Progressive R&B Album.
“I never have topics before starting a track. I freestyle and produce stream-of-consciousness songs.“
-SZA, Variety
The follow-up, Lana, arrived in December 2024 as a deluxe reissue of SOS, and was expanded further in February 2025 as SOS Deluxe: Lana. Among its new additions: “Luther,” a collaboration with Kendrick Lamar that spent thirteen consecutive weeks at number one on the Hot 100, becoming her longest-running US number-one to date.
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SZA and Kendrick Lamar: the Grand National Tour
In February 2025, SZA appeared alongside Lamar in his Super Bowl LIX halftime show, performing their collaborations to the largest television audience in American sports history. Months later, they embarked on the Grand National Tour – a co-headlining run that became the highest-grossing co-headlining tour in history. The scale of it is difficult to contextualise. SZA, who was delivering clothes to a record label just over a decade ago, performed to millions of people across North America in 2025 as one half of the biggest touring act on earth.
Seven Grammys and counting: SZA’s awards
SZA has won seven Grammy Awards from 26 nominations, including Best Progressive R&B Album for SOS, Best R&B Song for both “Snooze” and “Saturn,” and Best Pop Duo/Group Performance for “Ghost in the Machine.” She has also won a Brit Award, three American Music Awards, and two Billboard Women in Music awards, including Woman of the Year. She entered the 2024 Grammy ceremony as the most-nominated artist of the year. She did not win everything she was nominated for. She did not need to.
What’s next for SZA?
A third album is in the works. In the latter half of 2025, SZA began posting snippets of unreleased music on an alternate Instagram account – including a track called “Let You Know,” an airy R&B piece that suggested something more interior than the maximalism of SOS. Beyond music, she launched Not Beauty, a line of lip products sold exclusively at Grand National Tour venues, and was announced as the first artistic director of Vans. She also co-starred with Keke Palmer in the 2025 comedy film One of Them Days, which critics received warmly. The woman contains multitudes and is apparently not interested in slowing down long enough to count them.
The short version: Seven Grammys. The highest-grossing co-headlining tour in history. An acting debut. A beauty line. A third album on the way. SZA, who once nearly didn’t release her debut, is currently everywhere and does not appear to be stopping.
Nonchalant x
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