Thanks to the towering success of her long-awaited sophomore album, 2022’s ‘SOS,’ few in recent Billboard history can boast the year singer-songwriter SZA has had!
So much so, she’s been crowned the year’s top R&B act.
While the GRAMMY winner (born Solana Rowe) has made it clear she does not identify as an R&B artist, that hasn’t stopped her latest LP and its hits ‘Snooze,’ ‘Kill Bill,’ and others from rocking Billboard record books all year for the genre.
As if surpassing or meeting milestones set by music royals like Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin, Janet Jackson, Mariah Carey, and Mary J. Blige wasn’t enoughto boast, she also set a number of separate personal career marks when she watched ‘Bill’ – her inaugural Hot 100 #1 – become her longest-charting hit on the all-genre chart to date.
And while Rowe’s accomplishments were trumpeted much louder than her R&B contemporaries’ were, The Weeknd‘s domination – though quieter – was still quite potent.
As if boasting 3 top 10 hits on the Hot 100 wasn’t enough to boast (‘Creepin‘ with 21 Savage and Metro Boomin, ‘K-Pop‘ with Travis Scott and Bad Bunny, and ‘Die For You‘), the latter – thanks to the viral surge of its original incarnation on TikTok seven years after its release – zoomed to #1 after being afforded the remix treatment with Ariana Grande.
The uptick in exposure of ‘Die’ gave a lifeline to its parent album, 2016’s ‘Starboy,’ which made history when it crossed the 300-week threshold on the Billboard 200 this year.
That impressive performance, combined with the enduring stays of 2020’s ‘After Hours‘ and his greatest hits effort ‘The Highlights,‘ made the 33-year-old 2023’s best-performing male R&B act.
See the full list here.