SZA Says She’s Tired Of Being Labeled An R&B Artist

SZA says she’s tired of being described as an “R&B artist,” explaining that she feels the label is “super disrespectful.” The SOS singer discussed her reasoning during a new cover story for Consequence.

“I’m so tired of being pegged as [an] R&B artist,” SZA admitted. “I feel like that’s super disrespectful, because people are just like, ‘Oh, ’cause you’re Black, this is what you have to be’ — like, put in a box. And I hate that. With songs on this album, it’s supposed to help round out the picture and the story.”

She continued: “It’s very lazy to just throw me in the box of R&B. I love making Black music, period. Something that is just full of energy. Black music doesn’t have to just be R&B. We started rock ‘n’ roll. Why can’t we just be expansive and not reductive?”

SZA isn’t the only artist to complain about the categorization of R&B music as of late. Lizzo also recently labeled the existence of genres as being “racist inherently.”

“Genre’s racist inherently,” she told Entertainment Weekly. “I think if people did any research they would see that there was race music and then there was pop music. And race music was their way of segregating Black artists from being mainstream, because they didn’t want their kids listening to music created by Black and brown people because they said it was demonic and yada, yada, yada. So then there were these genres created almost like code words: R&B, and then of course eventually hip-hop and rap was born from that. I think when you think about pop, you think about MTV in the ’80s talking about ‘We can’t play rap music’ or ‘We can’t put this person on our platform because we’re thinking about what people in the middle of America think’ — and we all know what that’s code for.”

SZA’s comments come after the release of her highly-anticipated second studio album, SOS. Elsewhere in the chat with Consequence, SZA reflected on the anxiety she suffered during the build-up to the new album. She also spoke about the music industry more broadly and her desire to “disappear” from it.

Check out SZA’s cover story for Consequence below.

COVER STORY: SZA WITHOUT LIMITS ????

Don’t put SZA in a box.

On SOS, her boldest project yet, SZA makes it clear she’s more than an R&B artist: “I love making Black music, period.” https://t.co/yk7eDW7h4j

????: Daniel Sannwald pic.twitter.com/kQQcMYPu8W

— CONSEQUENCE (@consequence) December 12, 2022