"A SLAP IN THE FACE": TEAM SZA SPEAKS OUT ON VMA ARTIST OF THE YEAR SNUB

The absence of SZA from the MTV VMA Artist of the Year nominees has drawn a rebuke from her management team, a key exec from which spoke to The Hollywood Reporter for a 9/15 story.

“Obviously, [SZA] had one of the best years, if not the best year, of any artist at this point,” Top Dawg Entertainment Co-President Terrence “Punch” Henderson told the publication’s Mesfin Fekadu. 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.”

As a result of the flap, the team decided SZA would not appear on the VMA show.

“I stand behind Punch and the decision to pull out of the VMAs 100%,” TDE CEO Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith told HITS. “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.”

Punch told the Reporter that MTV was equivocal about why the TDE/RCA star wasn’t included in the category. She was nominated for Album, Song, Song of the Summer, R&B Video and Art Direction and, he said, “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."

MTV declined to comment to the Hollywood Reporter. Read the entire THR story here.

SZA’s SOS is the #2 U.S. album YTD in activity, a perch it has held for some time, with nearly 2.5m. Will the artist be suitably recognized by the Grammys for her extraordinary year? We shall see.