Key Takeaways
- Before her R&B breakthrough, SZA worked a string of jobs including waitressing, Sephora, and a brief stint dancing at a strip club.
- She says she was fired from the club for choosing to open for Trinidad James after his viral 2012 hit “All Gold Everything,” calling the moment a “lowkey a liberation anthem.”
- The risk paid off as SZA soon signed to Top Dawg Entertainment, released her debut EP Z and acclaimed album CTRL, and went on to win a Grammy, later nodding to her strip club days on “Broken Clocks.”
Before breaking through as one of the leading voices in R&B, SZA held various jobs. Those gigs included waitressing, selling cosmetics at Sephora and working at strip clubs. The latter, however, was short-lived.
On Wednesday, July 22, a Threads user shared a clip from rapper Trinidad James’ music video for his 2012 hit “All Gold Everything,” writing, “This song came out when I was in a very good place.”
The track went viral at the time and spawned one-liners like “Pop a molly, I’m sweatin’” and “Don’t believe me, just watch,” a phrase Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars would repopularize two years later with “Uptown Funk.”
SZA offered a very different memory in the comments. “Fired from the strip club For choosing to open up for him after this came out,” she wrote. “Lowkey a liberation anthem.”
While she got let go from the strip club, SZA’s risk eventually paid off. Soon after, she signed with Top Dawg Entertainment and released her label debut EP, Z, in 2014. Three years later, she dropped her critically acclaimed debut album, Ctrl, which earned her five Grammy nominations. She won her first Grammy in 2022 for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance for her Doja Cat collaboration, “Kiss Me More.”
Ctrl later nodded to that chapter on “Broken Clocks,” where SZA sings about returning to the strip club for a paycheck before insisting she won’t go back. “Jump quick to a paycheck, runnin' back to the strip club / I'm never goin' back, never goin' back,” she sings on the song’s opening verse.”
This much is true — she never did go back. But as she posts, “All Gold Everything” proved to be a liberation anthem for the Grammy winner, who has had an illustrious career since.
