Don’t @ me, however Lizzo is a worldwide celebrity and deserves all of the wins — and nothing much less.
I not too long ago watched her HBO Max documentary Love, Lizzo, and I laughed, cried, twerked, and felt immensely impressed.
So when Lizzo talked with Entertainment Weekly about her stage nervousness, proximity to Harry Styles and why she refuses to be put right into a field — I knew I’d fall in love together with her spirit once more for the hundredth time.
My largest takeaway was her dissection of the stigma of pop music, music genres’ problematic origins, and the backlash of her music “not being Black enough.”
Melissa Viviane Jefferson (professionally referred to as Lizzo) is a 34-year-old multihyphenate powerhouse — a talented rapper, lovely singer, expert flautist, and profitable businesswoman.
But, regardless that her profession is consistently on the rise — there are a couple of boundaries that may take a while to interrupt down regardless of how a lot Lizzo’s common music continues to high the charts.
Lizzo acquired my full consideration when she opened up with EW in regards to the stigma of the pop music style and race music. “Genre’s racist inherently,” she stated.
“I think if people did any research they would see that there was race music and then there was pop music. And race music was their way of segregating Black artists from being mainstream because they didn’t want their kids listening to music created by Black and brown people because they said it was demonic and yada, yada, yada.”
Basically, she’s saying sure “genres were created almost like code words” for classes dominated by folks of coloration: “I believe when you consider pop, you consider MTV within the ’80s speaking about ‘We can’t play rap music,’ or ‘We can’t put this particular person on our platform as a result of we’re serious about what folks in the midst of America suppose’ — and everyone knows what that’s code for.”
“So yes, because of that — fast-forward to 2022 — we have this well-oiled pop machine, but remember that it has a racist origin. And I think the coolest thing I’ve seen is rap and hip-hop artists become pop. Now pop music is really rap in its DNA — rap is running the game, and I think that’s so cool,” she added.
“But we forget that in the late ’80s and the early ’90s, there were these massive pop diva records that were sang by Black women like Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey. And I’m giving that same energy.”
For Lizzo, making music that is thought-about within the pop style does have its perks, but it surely additionally comes with a couple of complications.
Like she talked about within the documentary, she’s confronted backlash from folks pondering her persona and music aren’t Black sufficient — however, Lizzo has a optimistic comeback for the haters.
“I think anything that’s new, people are going to criticize and feel like it’s not for them,” she stated. “But once you get used to something, it might be for you. So for people who don’t like pop music or don’t like Black artists that make pop music, they may eventually like me.”
“You just gotta get used to me because I’m making good shit. You missing out.”
She’s actually is 100% that b*tch. Her phrases, not mine.
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