SZA has worked with Kendrick Lamar before, but as they prepare for their Grand National Tour, she says she’s “really excited to learn” from him on the road.
“I get to pick different tips and watch how he carries himself, how he emotes,” she tells Jennifer Hudson on her daytime talk show. “To watch him perform is to witness something magical.”
“One time he gave me the pointer of pretending to watch myself from above. He sees himself while he’s performing, and it actually changed a lot for me,” she continued. “It was weird, when I was watching myself from afar, I was like, ‘This not what I want to see, I want to see something different. I want to turn up.’ Then I just started, like, invoking a completely different energy and spirit within myself.”
The Grand National Tour kicks off April 19 in Minneapolis and will conclude on Aug. 9 after its European leg.
Elsewhere in her chat with Jennifer, SZA discussed being shocked by her fifth Grammy win at the 2025 show.
“I didn’t even expect to win. I was really focused on Doechii and everyone else, and I just kind of came to get a look off, and I ended up winning and that was such a blessing. I actually thought I was just coming to present something,” SZA said.
She also touched on her album SOS surpassing Michael Jackson‘s Thriller as the longest-running album by a Black artist in the top 10 of the Billboard 200. “It sounds so illegal. It’s like the craziest piece of information,” she said. “I’m grateful to even be in the same space as an accolade of his, but I have so much further to go and I’m still inspired by even [being] in that breath of conversation.”
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