SZA Delivers Label Executives Top Dawg & Punch The Billboard Visionary Award

BYLavender AlexandriaPublished on February 02, 2024530 Views

NEW YORK, NY - JANUARY 28: Recording artist SZA attends the 60th Annual GRAMMY Awards at Madison Square Garden on January 28, 2018 in New York City. (Photo by Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic)

SZA spoke on what makes the label so unique in all of music.

There's every indication that 2024 will be a huge year for Top Dawg Entertainment. Despite Kendrick Lamar moving on from the label after releasing all of his studio albums on it, they still have a stacked roster of talent. Earlier this week during a special 10th anniversary show for Isaiah Rashad's Cilvia Demo a document they passed out made the rounds online. The document claimed that new projects were coming out from nearly every single artist on the label. It even included projects from three brand-new artists, though their names were blacked out.

Only two of the albums they've confirmed are currently known about. The first is SZA's which many fans suspect is her previously announced SOS deluxe edition LANA. Earlier this week, Schoolboy Q announced his new album Blue Lips which drops in early March. It's his first studio album since 2019's Crash Talk. Other big TDE artists like Doechii, Jay Rock, Ab-Soul, and more are also expected to drop new projects this year. During a ceremony earlier this week, SZA paid tribute to the label's founders who set up the potential for all of this in the first place.

SZA Gives Top Dawg And Punch A Visionary Award

Top Dawg and Punch, who founded Top Dawg Entertainment in 2004, are the newest recipients of the Billboard Visionary Award. For the presentation they got one of the label's defining artists, SZA, to give a speech and she didn't disappoint. “I was just talking to Punch the other day about how much vision he had to have to see what he saw in me with no credentials,” she began.

“I really was looking insane and behaving insane and refused writers and all these things, and he believed in me. People would come to him and tell him he should change how I look, or I should be doing these kind of beats or working with these writers, and he didn’t change a single thing about me," her speech continued. What do you think of SZA's speech while giving an award to Punch and Top Dawg? What new TDE release are you most excited for this year? Let us know in the comment section below.

Read More: What Is SZA's Best-Selling Album?

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About The Author

Lavender Alexandria

Lavender Alexandria is a music and culture journalist based in Los Angeles, California. She’s covered dozens of musical genres and styles from the most mainstream to the most experimental and underground on her blog and accompanying YouTube channel that looks at music, pop culture, and Billboard charts since 2017: Lav’s Music Corner. Lavender has produced editorial and listicle content both in written and video form over the past far years and has also interviewed up-and-coming artists like Censored Dialogue. Her experiences covering culture have taken her from Hyperpop parties in LA to underground rap shows in Atlanta, to DIY punk shows in Charlotte. Lavender has also written for iHeartRadio, covering some of the biggest artists in Hip Hop such as Ice Spice, Drake, Doja Cat and Cardi B. She also has bylines with ScreenRant and continues to write for Ringtone magazine. Lavender is a lifelong Charlotte Hornets fan and her favorite rap artists include Clipping, Little Simz, Earl Sweatshirt, and Kendrick Lamar.