SZA revealed that she performed a cover of Eminem’s classic song “Lose Yourself” on Instagram on Thursday, May 30. The R&B singer-songwriter, 34, posted a video of the audio file playing her take on Marshall Mathers’ song. While it doesn’t seem like she plans to do a formal release of the song, she did share most of the track for fans to check out. “U ever just cover Eminem on some tender s**t for feels?” she wrote.
In the song, SZA performs “Lose Yourself” as a laidback alternative R&B-style tune. While some whispers of the classic guitar riff can be heard in her instrumentation, it’s mostly her own spin with some jazzy piano chords playing and sparing instrumentation. She also doesn’t really rap the verses. Instead, she sings it, and it sounds fantastic. She also skips the second verse, but she sounds fantastic as she jumps right into the third, riffing a few of the notes, growing higher as the song intensifies.
In the caption, SZA revealed that she’s not planning on including the song somewhere, so it’s unclear if it’ll get a wide release on streaming services. Hopefully fans are satisfied finding some MP3s. “Not on a project. Just for mental health,” she wrote.
Eminem seemed to give his own stamp of approval, commenting with a surprised emoji! His comment received over 16,000 likes. A bunch of fans left comments showing that they loved it. MTV commented with “this healed me.” Another fan wrote, “who needs therapy when you have sza.”
SZA’s cover actually came at a pivotal time for Eminem fans. The track dropped on the eve of the release date for his latest single “Houdini,” which dropped on Friday, May 31. The song was the lead single from his new album The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grace).
The cover comes nearly two years after SZA released her long-anticipated sophomore record SOS in 2022. It was reported that SZA would drop a deluxe edition of the album back in February 2023, but she’s since teased that it will be a new album.