SZA Calls Pop's Next Stars Months Early — SkimNews
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- Flowerovlove gained an early endorsement when SZA reposted her single "Boys" on Instagram Stories in May 2024 — more than a year before the British pop artist's debut album "Mini Skirt Warrior" and her slots at Coachella and opening for Halsey and Olivia Rodrigo.
- SZA has turned her 23-million-follower Instagram Stories into a discovery pipeline, repeatedly spotlighting rising artists including Natanya (whose mixtape "Attitude Era" dropped Sept. 10), bedroom-pop singer girlsweetvoiced, and Nomi — set to release her debut LP "This Wolf May Cry" and play Tyler, the Creator's Camp Flog Gnaw in November.
- Ayra Starr released her third studio album "Starrgirl" Aug. 14 after SZA spotlighted her track "Hot Body" on Instagram earlier this year; SZA has similarly featured Lagos-born Afropop singer Solana, who performs in Yoruba over Afropop production.
- Steve Lacy released a July collaboration with SZA, "Is It Cool?," after she wrote on Instagram that hearing his album demos made her "cry" and that his "deep raw resonance" had "revived" her.
- Flowerovlove told Elle that SZA's omission from "pop girlies" lineups "doesn't make any sense to me, because she is a pop girl" — reflecting recurring fan discourse on X asking "where are all of the Black girls in pop music?"
- SZA told I-D she's "not up against the pop girls" but "against anti-intellectualism and doing things easy," arguing that AI "can't even be prompted to fuck with" the blend of lived experience her music carries.
- Olivia Rodrigo told BBC News that SZA told her at the Grammys she had studied Rodrigo's songs for their songwriting — what Rodrigo called "the biggest compliment ever" from "one of the greatest living songwriters."
Why it matters: SZA's 23-million-follower Instagram Stories now function as a de facto A&R pipeline — she called Flowerovlove "fire as hell" 14 months before that artist's debut album, and she spotlighted Natanya before her Sept. 10 mixtape and Ayra Starr ahead of her Aug. 14 album. For emerging Black and Afropop artists often excluded from mainstream pop conversations, a single SZA story repost can deliver the visibility that streaming algorithms and label playlists tend to withhold.
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