Gather round, because it's story time with SZA. After hinting at something new in the making, the SOS The singer just shared an ethereal and mysterious clip featuring new music and a fresh, earthy aesthetic. “I know you told stories about me,” he sings over a groovy bass line and distant nature sound effects. “Most of them horrible, all true. Here are some for you.”
In the clip, which appears to be for the new song “Storytime,” a camera pans through a dark forest before stopping in front of a blue insect-like creature with long antennae. As it turns out, the bug in question is none other than SZA herself. She showed off the elaborate, intense look in an Instagram post in May without any context, captioning the photo “A bugs life.”
While his latest album SOS leaned on a nautical theme, from the ocean on the cover to the shipwreck set he built for the tour, this new era of his career seems to be about touching grass, literally. Fittingly, he debuted a new botanical set-up of lush vegetation (including a massive tree trunk and a giant ant crawling over it) at his headline shows at BST Hyde Park and Glastonbury on 29 and 30 June, respectively.
And if there was any doubt about what the visual pivot entailed, he confirmed that his long-awaited follow-up is, in fact, coming after playing the clip from “Storytime” in London. “New album, are you ready?” he shouted to an enthusiastic crowd. Although SZA has yet to confirm or deny that the next record will be wool — expected to launch in the first half of 2024 — the look of the garden certainly looks on par with the grassy green roofs he shared for the project on Instagram in December 2023.
While the “Kill Bill” singer is still keeping a release date under wraps, it looks like we're closer to a new release than ever. Also, his thanks for this new chapter seems to imply that he is a lot eager to share it with us. “Tonight my entire team made the impossible possible,” she shared on Instagram post-Glastonbury. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart for dreaming about me.”
