SZA has been selling out shows on her current tour -- including Thursday at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia. But she took a moment on her off day from the tour to accept the Billboard Woman of the Year Award.
"I really just want my life to be more than music," she said, "to be more than an artist. I want to serve others, I want to serve people, I want to be open and available for whatever God wants for me, and saying yes to everything that's scary, to everything that feels like it's not for you or where you don't belong, is really the only way where we walk through those doors."
She joins hitmakers Cardi B, Billie Eilish, Ariana Grande and Olivia Rodrigo, who were previous recipients of the award.
SZA has had a career year so far with SOS, her sophomore release. With her first, Ctrl, she edged closer to a chart record set by Rihanna. With SOS, she's eclipsed a record set by Whitney Houston.
In her speech, she says despite the success of the album, she knows she's among a group of current female artists that are all succeeding in previously unheard-of ways, equaling or besting previous chart records. SZA acknowledged several other recording artists at the event including Doechii, Lana Del Ray and rapper Latto."I didn't write anything, but that's also not who I am," she said. "I'm a very off-the-dome kind of person, and I guess what I wanted to say is like, there's so many women in this room right now that I respect so deeply. This could have been any of us in this room."
SOS has topped the Billboard 200 chart for 10 weeks, the eighth album to do so since 2010. Its first single, Kill Bill is her highest charting song yet topping out at No.2 on the chart.
"Whether it's unreleased songs that they thought they heard on the internet, or their favorite album cuts or [expletive] deep cuts from 2012, I don't care," she says. "I just wanna give them what they deserve and make it beautiful.
That's my biggest goal, and I'm really excited and there's nothing I enjoy more than being on stage and performing. It's way different than this whole like, putting out [expletive] on streaming and then watching people yell about it on Twitter."
She added, "It's way more human and it really makes it all worthwhile. To me, that makes it matter, 'cause we get to connect to people and make a difference in people's lives and move energy around. And that's magical to me for real.'
SZA won Billboard's Rulebreaker award in 2018. She's on tour through the end of the month.
Watch SZA's Billboard Woman of the Year speech below:
