In a new interview with Dazed published Wednesday (May 1), SZA spoke on only being considered an R&B artist because she’s Black. It’s a mistake that we and many others have committed in the past, not just as outlets and publications in white-dominant and often exploitative media spaces, but as non-Black audiences comparing Black art to the white-dominant spaces of pop music at large. It’s an issue that many Black artists like Tyler, The Creator have addressed to varying degrees.
Most importantly, it’s not meant to detach the St. Louis native from R&B, which she’s made a lot of, but rather to accurately assess the full range of musical styles that she employs as a pop artist, whose only defining characteristic is… well, being a popular artist that writes with pop song structures, which are not at all exclusive to the typical music genre expectations we associate with “pop.” “The only reason I’m defined as an R&B artist is because I’m Black,” SZA remarked. “It’s almost a little reductive because it doesn’t allow space to be anything else or try anything else. Justin Bieber is not considered an R&B artist. He is a pop artist who makes R&B, folk music, or whatever his heart desires.
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“I simply just want to be allowed the same opportunity to make whatever I want without a label. [Without it being] based on the color of my skin, or the crew that I run with, or the beats that I choose,” SZA continued. “I want ‘F2F’ to be seen as what it is. I want ‘Nobody Gets Me’ to be seen as what it is, I want ‘Kill Bill’ to be seen as what it is.
“At the same time, it’s nothing to get bent out of shape about. Because it’s just how people are processing you,” SZA concluded. “As long as I don’t process myself that way. I don’t necessarily box myself into anything. I’m just trying to make music, trying to vibe out and enjoy the experience.”
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