SZA has been announced as the next musical guest on Saturday Night Live, which should have fans ecstatic. Moreover, she will perform under host Keke Palmer on the December 3rd show. Given SZA's incredible success and full-length album hiatus, this new piece of promo hints at something big soon. After all, she did just drop her hot new single and music video, "Shirt."
While the TDE singer's new album has been help up for years, it hasn't slowed down her still-undeniable cultural impact. She's has a number of killer features and loosies over the past six years. For example, she assisted Doja Cat on the massive "Kiss Me More" and remixed fellow Top Dawg Doechii's "Persuasive." Most importantly, she released Ctrl (Deluxe) this summer, with an alternate version of "Love Galore" and six new tracks. She will also star in a new film called Tuna Melt, which has been described as an "updated Pulp Fiction."
Meanwhile, SNL's last musical guests were this week's Black Star, who performed with Dave Chapelle as host. The legendary duo, comprised of Talib Kweli and Yasiin Bey a.k.a. Mos Def, reunited in April for a long-awaited return. Their new album No Fear of Time was entirely produced by Madlib and released exclusively via the platform Luminary.
On SNL, they performed one of that comeback album's standout tracks: "So be it." Also, they performed "The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing," another NFOT highlight. Additionally, the duo has just dropped a music video for "So Be It" so they're on a promo run of their own.
With these musical guests in mind, the SNL stage has felt like a career revival in these weeks. Unsurprisingly, the show brought viewers great performances this year from artists like Kendrick Lamar, Megan Thee Stallion, and Jack Harlow.
However, SZA does not need a stage to rally her fans, just a bikini and some green fire. Recently, she teased fans with a new track called "PSA" on her 33rd birthday. In the teased video clip, a bikini-clad SZA sits amid a circle of green flames. Moreover, she also passes by the beach covered in a glow-in-the-dark bright blue liquid. Finally, she provided some BTS pics of the shoot thanking her team. SZA's been sitting on over 100 songs for five years and recently spoke to Complex about the effects.
“I don’t even know what this album is about and what it sounds like,” she said. “Which is why I had to go to the mode of what feels good to my brain and to my energy and the songs that I think are hot. So I just have to go with them. I have no idea what it sounds like to anybody else.”
"So bizarre," she added about the sound of her new album. "It’s weird that I can’t put my finger on it. A little bit of everything. And a little aggressive. Some parts are incredibly soft. Some of them are ballads.”
You can check out Black Star's SNL performances below while we wait for SZA to grace the late night stage.
