SZA and Simone Biles linked up for some friendly competition ahead of the 2024 Olympics.
The Grammy Award winner, 34, met with the Olympic gold medalist, 27, in a promo video for the international sporting event uploaded on Monday.
“This is my dream to talk to you. I'm not even kidding,” gushed SZA to Biles. “I was so hype, because you're like my wildest dream. … I just have never seen anything like you. No one has, but it's just like, wow.”
Before the two engaged in a friendly handstand contest, SZA recalled being a former gymnast herself. When asked what made her pivot to singing, the SOS hitmaker said she made the choice “when it was clear” that she would not become “a national gymnast,” but still needed something “to be competitive at.”
“But you can't break a nail. You can't hurt yourself,” said Biles before getting upside down.
“I don't care about my nails. I'm scared to lose,” SZA replied.
Surprisingly, SZA held her own during their impromptu handstand competition despite almost knocking over Biles a couple times in the process. The video's titled "When SZA Met Simone – Part 1," so fans can likely expect more.
Before achieving music stardom, SZA spoke to Complex’s Insanul Ahmed in 2013 about her time as an athlete and how the grueling nature of sports inhibited her growth.
“I was a gymnast for 13 years so I was heavy into sports. I directed all my attention to it. I did really well in sports and was captain of my team. I was hardcore USA Gymnastics,” a then-23-year-old SZA told Complex. “When I was a sophomore in high school in 2005, I was 5th in the nation as a gymnast. The extreme exercise stunts your growth, you’re overexerting your body so much it doesn’t grow. Your period doesn't come till super late. So I was like 4’9’ forever. Once I got lazy and didn’t want to practice and got into other shit, I grew. Now I’m 5’4'.”
As fate would have it, SZA’s stint as a competing athlete led her to the musical influences that have made her the star she is today despite her conservative upbringing, thanks to a mixtape from a friend and an iPod she found at a gymnastics camp.
“I was raised orthodox Muslim. Very sheltered, very conservative. I used to wear overalls and baggy clothes because modesty is a big thing [in Islam]. All my friends were Muslim with the exception of my neighbors,” SZA told Complex. “I didn’t watch television or listen to the radio. When I was cheerleading and doing gymnastics, my dad made me put on leggings and long sleeves. I was a girl so my dad was like, ‘You do nothing.’”
She added that her “only option” growing up was to listen to the music her father did, which included Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, and Louis Armstrong.
“One of my classmates had a bar mitzvah, so my dad let me go. She gave us this little goodie bag that had a mixtape that had Red Hot Chili Peppers, LFO, Macy Gray all this emo sad rich white kid shit on it. I loved that CD, I played it until it was finished,” she said in the 2013 conversation with Ahmed.
SZA continued, “Other than that, the slight glimpses of outside music came from this iPod I found in gymnastic camp. The dial didn’t work, but it would play all the way through. It had Common, Björk, a lot of Wu, Nas, Mos Def, Hov on it. That was my only thing and I was like this shit is tough. That stuck hard.”