SZA. Photo courtesy of RCA Records.
SZA's sophomore album SOS has debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart with 318,000 equivalent album units, marking the singer's first chart-topping LP. It's the strongest debut of the singer's career, and a huge increase from her previous effort — her debut album Ctrl, released in 2017, moved 60,000 units in its first week.
According to Billboard, the first-week sales of SOS contain the most first-week streams for an R&B album in history. However, SZA herself has taken exception with the label. “I’m so tired of being pegged as [an] R&B artist,” she told Consequence this month. “I feel like that’s super disrespectful, because people are just like, ‘Oh, ‘cause you’re Black, this is what you have to be’ – like, put in a box. And I hate that. With songs on this album, it’s supposed to help round out the picture and the story.”
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SOS is the fifth-biggest debut of 2022. Ahead of SZA are Taylor Swift with Midnights (1.578 million equivalent albums sold), Harry’s House by Harry Styles (521,000), Drake and 21 Savage’s Her Loss (404,000) and Beyoncé’s Renaissance (332,000).
