“When I make a good song, literally it’s better than sex,” SZA says as she peels off her fake eyelashes. The Grammy-winning musician lives in Los Angeles, but tonight she’s in New York, curled up in her hotel room at the Soho Grand between dates on her arena tour. SZA Net Worth
A manicurist soaks off her nail extensions with acetone. SZA—who reportedly has a net worth of $6 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth—apologizes as she pulls her other hand away, reaching for the lighter next to her. “I’m scared I’m going to light my nails on fire because of the acetone,” she says. “If it happens, just everybody act normal.”
The 34-year-old, born Solána Rowe, has become one of the most successful artists of her generation with her brash, anxious overshares. Since she signed to the rap label Top Dawg Entertainment in 2013, SZA has been churning out intimate, thorny, genre-blending hits about self-love and self-loathing.
Her debut album, “Ctrl,” hasn’t left the Billboard 200 chart since July 2017. Her follow-up, SOS, dropped in December 2022; its 10 weeks on the chart made it the longest-running No. 1 album by a female artist of the decade. It also broke a record for most weeks atop the R&B chart, besting Whitney Houston’s second album more than three decades prior. Between “Ctrl” and “SOS,” SZA won a Grammy for “Kiss Me More,” her piquant collaboration with Doja Cat. Now SOS is expected to be a leading contender for album of the year at the next Grammys.
The five years between “Ctrl” and “SOS” elevated SZA to superstar status. She became more famous by being less present, a specter on music’s periphery. Her fans are ravenous, rushing to stream her music and selling out dates on her first headline arena tour. SZA Net Worth
Here are a few things SZA revealed to WSJ. Magazine…
SZA on songwriting as a way of resolving and documenting problems:
“When I leave the studio, I feel better and empty,” she says. “There’s no better sleep than empty-brain sleep, and that can only come after I’ve been in the studio for 10 hours and done something good in there.”
SZA on her SOS song, “Kill Bill,” her first solo song to go number 1 around the world:
While SZA was working on SOS, she started thinking about the ultimate post-breakup fantasy. The worst thing that could happen to an ex felt like the only thing he deserved. “Like, ‘Hehehehe,’” she says, mimicking a mischievous shoulder-devil, “‘I might kill my ex!’”
Her revenge plot has lived on the Billboard Hot 100 for 40-plus weeks. Yet she resents the hit. “The songs that I care so much about, that I tried so hard on, people be like, ‘That’s nice,’ ” she says. “But the shit that took no thought and came out of my mouth in five seconds? ‘Girl, that’s the one.’ ”
SZA on being obsessive about perfecting her songs:
“I’ll die about that shit every time,” she says. Everyone wants more songs, faster, now. SZA insists on taking her time.
SZA on sometimes being uneasy with how she’s perceived at big events:
“Sometimes when I’m in those situations, it makes me more anxious, because I’m like, Damn, they’re about to judge me for being a bitch, or quiet, or looking rude,” she says. “It’s everything, it’s not you, it’s me, and I’m freaking out, and I don’t know how to be any different right now.”
Terrence “Punch” Henderson, the president of TDE, which represents SZA, on her earliest music:
“[Music] really fell into her lap, as opposed to other artists where this has always been their dream,” Henderson says.
SZA on her early ambitions:
She grew up in New Jersey and wanted to be a businesswoman, she says, like “Angelica’s mom from Rugrats.”
SZA on always distrusting her first drafts:
“If you accept my first draft,” she says, “I won’t trust you.” She says it happened with “Slime You Out,” the Drake single she’s featured on. “I just handed in the first draft to Drake, and he’s putting it on his album,” she says. “I’m scared because I handed in second vocals and he didn’t use that. And now I’m like, ‘Are you trying to sabotage me?’ I know that’s not true. I literally know that’s not true, but that’s how bad I feel about my first draft. When things come from an effortless space, I almost can’t enjoy it.” In late September, the single debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
SZA on therapy:
SZA’s emotions live close to the surface, and they can be hard to manage. She says she’s tried hypnotherapy and talk therapy; she’s seen a psychiatrist and also an acupuncturist. One practitioner taught her how to box breathe, inhaling, exhaling and holding on four-counts. “After I had box breathed myself for three months and didn’t get better, I called her in a f—ing frenzy like, ‘I’m about to commit myself to an institution today, I need help!’ I said, ‘What form of therapy do you do? DBT?’ ” (That’s dialectical behavior therapy.) “She was like, ‘I don’t have a clinical form of therapy because I’m not a licensed therapist, honey. I thought you knew that.’ It turns out she was not a board-certified therapist. She was a f— ing life coach.”
SZA on also wanting to write about good things:
“I go through so many other moments in life that are amazing, things that I could never describe,” she says. “I haven’t even tried to find words for those things.”
SZA on defying genres:
IN SZA’S EARLY EPS, you can hear the suggestion of the music she’d eventually make her way to: surprising vocal deliveries and diversions, the playful intimacy, a sound that defies genre. But blogs called her R&B, the de facto genre for anyone making music who happens to be Black and a woman. It confused her. She liked Blink-182 and Radiohead, and some of Ctrl’s songs clearly had alternative-rock influences. “I don’t want to push the R&B audience away,” she says. “I also don’t want to not be allowed to be who I am in a full spectrum.”
Henderson on SZA’s status in the R&B genre:
“From what I saw, no matter what happened, they’re going to place her in this category,” Henderson says. “So we can’t even focus on it. If you look at the first song we dropped off of Ctrl, it was ‘Drew Barrymore,’ which was more alternative than R&B.” SZA Net Worth
SZA on her relationship with Terrence “Punch” Henderson:
Henderson has supported SZA’s career for more than a decade, but their creative disagreements spill on to social media. “The back-and-forth that you see publicly is because we are just different as f—. We’ve been with each other a long time, and he has a very different way of doing pretty much everything,” SZA says. When she was younger, greener, she didn’t know any better, or she didn’t have the budget, or she didn’t have a preference. Now, she says, “I’m grown and I be saying no. And he’s not used to that.”
Their exchanges can feel overwhelming to her. While making SOS, he drafted a tracklist that she didn’t like. “He’s my manager and I respect him, but I have emotional ties to these songs. I may not be Punch-level at arranging a sequence, but I still know what I like.”
It was worse on Ctrl, she says, when he stopped coming to the studio and over-saw the mix without her. “It made me really angry, because it’s like you’re digging through my underwear drawer when I’m not home, and I don’t like that. And to other people it’s like, this is just music. It’s like, no, these are my personal things. These are my period panties, basically.”
Henderson on their disagreements being part of their process:
“You’ll hear about it publicly based on tweets, because it might be something that’s emotional in the moment, but then as soon as that moment passes, it’s like nothing has happened,” he says.
SZA on Henderson often being right, both about work and her personal life:
“There’s been boys that I dated, and he told me from the time it started, ‘He’s going to break your heart. This person’s a snake,’ ” she says. “And I’d be like, ‘You’re crazy.’ And lo and behold, that person has broken my heart and turned out to do the snake shit.”
SZA on her video for the song, “Snooze,” and working with Justin Bieber:
It became the album’s second-highest-charting song after the music video, featuring Justin Bieber dropped, and Bieber guested on the song’s acoustic version.
“Justin wasn’t even in the video until the video was already being shot,” SZA says. “Him and Hailey [Bieber] were randomly the first people to hit me on FaceTime after SOS dropped.” At the video’s shoot, “[Bieber] showed up and he was down as f— for the whole day, and didn’t trip about nothing.” The video is dreamy, with shots of SZA in love with various men, then dancing on a robot at the end. They improvised the entire thing, she says, “except for the robot. That was pre-made and pre-planned.”
SZA on the her problem with the robot in the video:
“The robot had cornrows, but that was my fault,” she says. “Apparently in a stream of-consciousness talk, I said they should. I probably did say that shit! But when I rolled up and that robot had cornrows, baby, I was fit to be f—ing tied.”
Phoebe Bridgers on SZA’s meticulousness in the studio during recording her verse on the SOS song “Ghost in the Machine”:
“She has a straightforward creative vision, and everyone just listens to her,” Bridgers says. “It seems like she’s the head of everything”—from song collaborators to music video creative.
SZA on worrying about her fans:
“If they relate too much [to the music],” she says, “then they must be having a very hard time.”
SZA on touring with SOS:
On tour with SOS, the songs feel more honest when an arena is singing them together. She wants it to feel cathartic for everyone. “When I’m onstage I’m actually so stressed about doing a good job, I can only lock in on one fan at a time per section. But on that note, that’s good though, because I’ve been knowing people by face and name,” she says. “Like, ‘Oh, I’ve seen you for four years, you’re coming backstage with me.’ ”
Watch…
Read the full article here.
Photos: Ethan James Green for WSJ. Magazine.
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