S.O.S. Snub Or ‘Sabotage?’ TDE President Punch Pulled SZA’s MTV VMAs Performance Over ‘Disrespectful’ Artist Of The Year Snub
SZA‘s manager, Terrence “Punch” Henderson, revealed he pulled her MTV VMAs performance because they snubbed her for Artist of the Year nominations, but some fans are calling it “sabotage.”
Source: Ella Hovsepian/Kevin Winter / Getty
It’s been an epic year for the “Kill Bill” singer. In 2023, SZA topped the success of her debut album CTRL with S.O.S. Despite her record-breaking success and critically acclaimed hits, the VMAs didn’t nominate SZA for Artist of the Year. Her manager says he refused to let her perform at the awards show because the snub was “disrespectful.”
Obviously, she had one of the best years, if not the best year, of any artist at this point. 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,” he told The Hollywood Reporter.
He believes she deserved recognition among this year’s other nominees, Beyoncé, Shakira, Nicki Minaj, Karol G, Doja Cat, and Taylor Swift. Although Swifties probably still had her fan-voted awards sweep in the bag regardless, Punch demanded they put some respect on her name. And then, he demanded answers.
Punch reached out to the network for answers, but “they couldn’t give a clear answer as to why she wasn’t [nominated]. 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]. 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,” he continued.
he’s not wrong tho. they keep giving awards to that white woman when no one outside her fandom knows her music and the artists that actually have music that’s known by the GP are always snubbed https://t.co/HVW0TBGRu5
— shane (@shxnep) September 15, 2023
The numbers don’t lie. After all, S.O.S. spent 10 weeks at #1 on Billboard’s 200 albums. It broke the record for the longest time at the top of Billboard’s R&B/Hip-Hop albums this century. SZA’s triple platinum album has its fifth top 10 hit with “Snooze” currently at # 7 on the Hot 100.
“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. 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,” Punch explained.
See where SZA stands on pulling out of the MTV VMAs and fans’ reactions after the flip.
