SZA Has the No. 1 Album in the Country

SZA has earned her first Billboard 200 No. 1 debut with SOS, also landing atop the Top R&B Albums and Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums charts.

SZA now holds the title of No. 1 artist on the Billboard 200 chart thanks to her sophomore album SOS. SZA, real name Solána Rowe, has achieved the historical feat of biggest streaming week for an R&B album and third-largest streaming week of the year.

On the Billboard 200 chart week dated December 24, SOS sold 318,000 equivalent album units. With a strong start, SOS is also the fifth-largest debut of 2022, following the opening weeks of  Taylor Swift’s Midnights (1.578 million), Harry Styles’ Harry’s House (521,000), Drake and 21 Savage’s Her Loss (404,000) and Beyoncé’s Renaissance (332,000).

The number-one accomplishment also comes five years since Rowe dropped her debut album Ctrl in 2017. To celebrate the fifth anniversary of the album, the Grammy-winning artist released a deluxe anniversary edition of Ctrl earlier this year.

On February 21, Rowe with embark on the 17-date 'SOS Tour' with opening act Omar Apollo. In a conversation on podcast Rolling Stone Music Now, Rowe discussed the anticipation for her first-ever arena tour.

I’m really just excited to give people whatever they want,” she said. “Because I feel I’ve been gone for so long and people have been kind enough to watch me perform the same set for f******* five years, and that is really annoying, and I get that, and the patience and the love that they’ve shown me the whole way… I just wanna give them the craziest experience they could ever have and play whatever they want. Whether it’s unreleased songs that they thought they heard on the internet, or their favorite album cuts or f******* deep cuts from 2012, I don’t care. I just wanna give them what they deserve and make it beautiful."