SZA’s ‘SOS’ Is Close To Breaking Record Set By Usher’s ‘Confessions’

SZA has continued her reign on top of the Billboard Hot 200 album chart for the sixth consecutive week, putting her within reach of a record set by Usher in 2004.

Her sophomore album SOS landed at the No. 1 position on the chart released by Billboard on Monday (January 23), after earning an additional 119,000 equivalent album units for the week ending January 19. Those figures include about 160.1 million streams of the album’s 23 tracks.

With this latest chart victory, SZA is now the only woman other than Adele and Taylor Swift to have spent six weeks at the top of the chart since Britain’s Got Talent sensation Susan Boyle did the same with her debut album between December 2009 and January 2010. This week, SZA and Swift happen to also be the only two women in the Top 10 on the Hot 200 chart, which also includes the latest projects by Metro Boomin, The Weeknd and Drake & 21 Savage.

SZA is now one week away from beating a record set by Janet Jackson in 1993. Additionally, SOS has now become the only R&B album by any act to spend this many consecutive weeks at No. 1 since.

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The next two benchmarks for SZA would be to eclipse the records set by Usher, whose Confessions was the last R&B album to hit No. 1 nine times, though not during consecutive weeks; and Drake who hit the top spot on the Hot 200 for 13 non-consecutive weeks with Views in 2016.

Last week, Top Dawg Entertainment president Terrence “Punch” Henderson reflected on the commercial success of SOS with a heartfelt tweet thanking everyone involved with making SZA’s long-awaited follow-up to 2017’s Ctrl.

“Man. Sitting here thinking about all of the success and conversation surrounding SOS,” he wrote. “It’s truly a surreal moment. Wanted to take time and say thank you to every person who was/is involved in making this thing go! You are truly appreciated!”

Since delivering her second LP on December 9, SZA has celebrated a number of career milestones. In addition to becoming her first No. 1 album, SOS landed the “Shirt” singer at the top of Spotify’s Top Artists Global daily chart on the day it was released. She knocked Bad Bunny out of the spot, becoming the first Black female artist to top the fan-driven chart.

The songs from SOS have also earned SZA some accolades to add to the project’s success. Twenty of the project’s 23 tracks debuted on Billboard‘s Hot 100 chart, with “Kill Bill” and “Nobody Gets Me” landing in the chart’s top ten positions, during the album’s first week of release.

On January 11, SZA delivered a Kill Bill-themed video for her song of the same name. Directed by Christian Breslauer, the clip opens with SZA getting a break-up letter from her boyfriend, who also called on his crew to shoot up the trailer home they were living in.

The singer survives the attack and gets a ride from co-star Vivica A. Fox — a nod to her role in the original film — who helps SZA recover at an undisclosed location.

The TDE singer then gets her affairs in order and loads up on weapons to kickstart her revenge tour. She obliterates a team of sword-wielding gangsters before getting to her boyfriend in an animated scene where she gets the last laugh.

The video for “Kill Bill,” which also features a snippet of “Seek & Destroy” and scenes of a naked SZA tied up and hanging in a room while she sings the song’s lyrics, has earned 13 million views on YouTube since its release.