Last Tuesday (September 12), MTV hosted the 2023 Video Music Awards in Newark, New Jersey. For the ceremony, superstar R&B singer SZA was nominated for eight different awards such as Video of the Year, Song of the Year, Album of the Year, and Best R&B, all stemming from her December 2022 sophomore album SOS. However, SZA was not in attendance for the show, and actually turned down the opportunity to be one of the event’s performers. Here’s why.
On Friday (September 15), SZA’s manager and the co-president of her record label Top Dawg Entertainment Terrence “Punch” Henderson did an interview with Hollywood Reporter, where he explained that their decision to forgo the VMAs performance stemmed from SZA’s absence as a nominee for the Artist of the Year category.
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“Obviously, [SZA] had one of the best years, if not the best year, of any artist at this point,” Henderson said. “I don’t see why she wouldn’t be nominated for artist of the year. It just really didn’t make any sense to me. It’s disrespectful.”
Henderson continued by pointing out how impactful SOS was in the past year, considering songs like “Kill Bill,” “I Hate U,” “Shirt,” “Snooze,” and more all dominated charts.
“Why wouldn’t she be nominated for artist of the year? Even with the other artists that were nominated for artist of the year, some of them were even off-cycle,” he added. “They didn’t have an album out. I mean, no disrespect to them or anybody else; everybody’s great and all of that, but still, you can’t discredit what SOS has done and is currently doing.”
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Instead of SZA, MTV decided to nominate Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Doja Cat, Karol G, Nicki Minaj, and Shakira for Artist of the Year, with Swift taking home the hardware. When reached out to by HitsDailyDouble following Henderson’s interview, TDE CEO Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith echoed his friend’s sentiments.
“I stand behind Punch and the decision to pull out of the VMAs 100%,” Tiffith told HITS on Monday (September 18). “MTV wasn’t even willing to discuss why SZA wasn’t nominated for Artist of Year. If we aren’t even worth talking to about it, we don’t need to be there. She gave the world a great body of work and we will not allow any disrespect.”
When elaborating on TDE’s united front, Tiffith described what their behind-the-scenes conversations looked like with MTV before the VMAs.
“It was just, ‘Well, she’s nominated for all these other [awards].’ And they ended up saying, ‘OK, well we could do another call’ because there were people on [the call] about logistics for the show who didn’t have anything to do with [the nominations],” he said. “When we tried to set up the second call, they didn’t want to discuss Artist of the Year, which to me was really a slap in the face.”
Ultimately, SZA would end up only winning one of the eight categories she was nominated for, which was Best R&B for her single “Shirt.”
Photo by Erika Goldring/WireImage