On the heels of releasing her sophomore album SOS, SZA opened up about her life as a teenager, reflecting on getting bullied while in high school.

Speaking with PEOPLE, the “Shirt” artist said that she experienced bullying in many different forms.

“I was bullied because I wasn't quiet and I was awkward at the same time,” said the Grammy winner. “I wasn't this tiny sad victim, but I was more so attacked just because it was giving 'What is wrong with you?' energy.”

“I always thought, 'Oh my God.' I'll never have the approval of anyone in life, this must be my defining factor, this must be the bottom line.”

Raised by a Muslim father and Christian mother, SZA shared that, while in middle school, she faced Islamophobia and stopped wearing her hijab in school after 9/11. Despite what she went through, the 33-year-old singer-songwriter is proud about her faith and insisted those encounters shaped who she is today.

"I realized that all the things that made me feel so lame were actually what made me into who I am," she said. "It's like, I didn't go to prom because I didn't have any friends and I had no one to go to prom with ... [and now] it's so weird that my life turned into [having] a bodyguard while traveling to parties."

"All these things, if I had such a fulfilling existence and experience in high school, I would've felt validated to the point where I didn't need to do anymore. [So] I just had to do more, I had to be more because I was like, 'This s—ty experience can't be the end of it because if it is, I am cooked.' "

SZA’s words of encouragement for those who endured what she did: “Everyone who experiences bullying, that just sucks, but it's going to lead you to something, it has to. If you could hold on and just wait until high school is over because 10 years from now, I promise you, none of those people will matter.”