SZA Celebrates ‘SOS’ Historic Billboard 200 Dominance: 'Thank You Everyone'

SZA has shared an emotional post to mark her historic run on the Billboard 200, including two new milestones scored in the seventh week since releasing SOS.

The Top Dawg Entertainment singer took to Instagram on Thursday (February 2) to celebrate having topped Billboard‘s album chart for the seventh consecutive week. Along with a handful of behind the scenes shots from a forthcoming video or photo shoot, SZA shared that she’s reached two new records with her sophomore project.

According to two screenshots of tweets by Chart Data, SZA has now become the third female artist to have an album spend at least seven weeks at the No. 1 position on the Billboard 200, alongside Adele and Taylor Swift. SOS has also become the first album in history to keep 10 songs on the Hot 100 singles chart for seven consecutive weeks.

“7 weeks at #1 is more than I ever imagined [emotional smiley face emoji],” she captioned the post. “I’m jus tryna do something worth something w my time in the sun . Thank you God . Thank you everyone [white heart emoji, S.O.S. emoji]”

Since delivering her second LP on December 9, SZA has celebrated a number of career milestones. With its seventh week on top, SOS helped the Maryland native equal a chart record set by Whitney Houston nearly 40 years ago.

With roughly 111,000 album-equivalent units last week, the project became the first R&B album to spend its first seven weeks at No. 1 since Whitney Houston’s Whitney in 1987. At the time of its release, Whitney was the first R&B album by a woman to debut atop the chart.

SZA has now broken a record set by Janet Jackson in 1993 and become the only R&B album by any act to spend this many consecutive weeks at No. 1 since then. SOS also has the most weeks at No. 1 for an R&B/Hip Hop album by a woman, or R&B album by a woman, since Mariah Carey’s Music Box in 1994.

The next two benchmarks in the genre would be to eclipse the records set by Usher, whose Confessions was the last R&B album to hit No. 1 nine times, though not during consecutive weeks; and Drake who hit the top spot on the Hot 200 for 13 non-consecutive weeks with Views in 2016.

Taylor Swift was the last woman to spend at least seven weeks atop the Billboard 200 with 2020’s Folklore, which spent its first six weeks at No. 1 before logging two more non-consecutive weeks later in the year. SOS is also the first album by a female artist in any genre to spend its first seven weeks at No. 1 since pop juggernaut Adele’s 25 in 2016.

Additionally, SZA’s SOS is the first album to achieve seven straight weeks at No. 1 since the Encanto soundtrack in March 2022, which topped the chart for eight weeks in a row and nine in total.

The release of SOS ended a five-year wait for a new SZA album following her critically acclaimed debut Ctrl. Featuring the likes of Travis Scott, Don Toliver and the late Ol’ Dirty Bastard, the project opened at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with 318,000 first-week units.

That figure included 404.58 million on-demand official streams, breaking the record for the biggest streaming week ever for an R&B album and becoming the second biggest streaming week for an album by a female artist.

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The songs from SOS have also earned SZA some accolades to add to the project’s success. Twenty of the project’s 23 tracks debuted on Billboard‘s Hot 100 chart, with “Kill Bill” and “Nobody Gets Me” landing in the chart’s Top 10 positions, during the album’s first week of release.

Following the album’s fifth week atop the Billboard 200, Top Dawg Entertainment president Terrence “Punch” Henderson reflected on the commercial success of SOS with a heartfelt tweet thanking everyone involved with making the project.

“Man. Sitting here thinking about all of the success and conversation surrounding SOS,” he wrote. “It’s truly a surreal moment. Wanted to take time and say thank you to every person who was/is involved in making this thing go! You are truly appreciated!”

Later this month, SZA is set to take her latest collections of songs out across North American on her first-ever arena trek, with support from Omar Apollo.

The 17-date SOS Tour kicks off in Columbus, Ohio on February 21. From there, SZA will hit other cities such as Chicago, Detroit, Toronto, Boston, New York City, Atlanta and Dallas before closing things out in Los Angeles on March 22.