SZA Suggests She Plans to Take Extended Break Following ‘SOS’ Release: ‘I'm Gonna Disappear’

Following the release of her long-awaited new album 'SOS', TDE singer-songwriter SZA has suggested that she plans to “disappear" for as long as she can.

Sza performs on stage during Global Citizen Festival 2022
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Image via Getty/Jemal Countess

Sza performs on stage during Global Citizen Festival 2022

SZA said that she plans to “disappear” for a while following the release of her new album SOS.

In a cover feature with Consequence, the TDE singer-songwriter suggested that she might leave fans waiting for a follow-up to the new album as long as they did after CTRL dropped in 2017. “I’m gonna disappear, definitely, for as long as I can,” she replied when asked about her post-SOS plans. “I need to shoot as many videos as I can, so I can disappear for longer.”

It’s unclear how long SZA might “disappear” for, but she definitely gave fans plenty to enjoy in the meantime with SOS, which is just shy of 68 minutes and 23 tracks-long. 

Elsewhere in the interview, SZA addressed how she doesn’t feel comfortable being labeled as an R&B artist. “I’m so tired of being pegged as [an] R&B artist,” she explained. “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.”

Describing the tag as “lazy,” SZA added that she simply loves making “Black music, period,” not just R&B. “Something that is just full of energy. Black music doesn’t have to just be R&B,” she said. “We started rock ‘n’ roll. Why can’t we just be expansive and not reductive?”

SZA also spoke about how it felt to collaborate with indie rockstar Phoebe Bridgers, who shows up on “Ghost in the Machine” for one the album’s best moments. “It was just a DM,” she said on how they got in the studio together. “She popped on by.  She was cool as fuck. She was so funny, and we had some of the best conversations. We’ve been playing festivals together recently, but on at the same time, so we never really got to meet or anything like that. It was interesting to bring us both together.”

Read the full feature here.

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