“Clock starts now,” SZA wrote the caption of her latest Instagram video, a teaser for new music — potentially the long awaited deluxe of her smash sophomore album, SOS, a separate project named Lana, both, or a secret third thing (more on this later).
In the video, the known nature-lover pops out of a tent pitched near a creek, crosses to the other side, pulls down her baggy camo pants, and pops a squat. She looks directly into the camera that slowly zooms in on her before pulling out some toilet tissue and wiping up. Abiding by the backpacker principle — pack it in, pack it out — she pops the used tissue into her (also camo) jacket. A yacht-rock-styled unreleased song soundtracks the scene, in which she sings: “You know we got a real history/That’s the reason I can’t choose me/You know that dick been good to me/You make it hard for me to choose me.”
The clip dropped on Dec. 9, the two-year anniversary of SOS, which she also seemed to note in the caption. Soon after SOS’s debut, in an interview with Rolling Stone Music Now, SZA revealed that she thought the world would hate it. “I never thought in a million years that people would like it,” she said. “Part of me was just like, I just wanna get it over with. I wanna meet my own fate. If niggas hate it, then great. I can never do music again. And I told my engineer, we’ll move to India and we’ll live on an ashram and we’ll take a vow of silence and that’s it.”
As you probably know, dear reader, it didn’t quite go that way. It debuted at Number One on the Billboard 200. It spent 10 weeks in that spot and has floated across the chart since, much like how her first album CTRL hasn’t left the Billboard 200 since its release, either. SOS earned her three Grammys at this year’s ceremony, including Best R&B Song for “Snooze.”
In an interview for her Rolling Stone Grammy preview cover story in 2023, she wore red clogs with “Lana” painted on each foot while editing the “Snooze” music video. SOS, the album, took its name from “Sos,” a nickname for SZA (born Solána Imani Rowe) used by folks very familiar with her. “Now I got to be called something else,” SZA told Rolling Stone last year. “I’m now going by Lana, but that might be burnt, too.” At the time, she revealed that she planned for the Lana deluxe to include 10 new songs, the format inspired by Lil Uzi Vert’s LUV vs. the World 2, the deluxe version of their beloved Eternal Atake.
Its not yet clear what songs will be on Lana. SZA had previously told Rolling Stone that she planned to drop Lana last year, but in March, she wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that she would release a deluxe to SOS consisting of previously unauthorized leaks and would be “starting ‘Lana’ from scratch.”
“Lana deserves more time and music no one’s ever heard before,” she wrote. “I decided w all the leaks and me not knowing what someone has or doesn’t have it’s too complicated so I should jus consolidate the leaks and the outtakes and drop that as to not prolong the process and then focus on my next project as a win win for everybody.”
A recent British Vogue cover story suggested Lana and the SOS deluxe would be two different projects as well, though the new Instagram clip reads “SOS deluxe” below the word “Lana.” It also suggested both will come this autumn. What seems more certain is the release of One of Them Days, the Issa Rae-produced comedy which finds SZA in her first feature-length film leading role alongside Keke Palmer. The movie, set to hit theaters on Jan. 17, features appearances from Maude Apatow, Janelle James, and Lil Rel Howery.
