From the moment she broke onto the national scene in 2019, Lizzo has never shied away from sharing her thoughts and feelings. Her recent interview with Entertainment Weekly is the latest example of her desire to be bold and honest about her life, career and much more. While discussing her recent documentary, Love, Lizzo, with Gerald Hall of Entertainment Weekly, Lizzo was asked directly about the intersection of race and pop music.
“Now, also in the doc, you talk about backlash over what you were wearing and people saying that you and your music weren’t Black enough. Is that a stigma of pop music, because the genre can be so white-feeling that if you have a hit there, then people think you’re catering to a specific demographic?” Hall asked.
“Absolutely. Well, genre’s racist inherently. 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. So then there were these genres created almost like code words: R&B, and then of course eventually hip-hop and rap was born from that,” Lizzo answered.
With an understanding of where the pop genre comes from, Lizzo is attempting to put her own spin on. As she sees it, she’s trying to take elements of Whitney Houston and Maria Carey while pulling in pieces of rap.
“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,” Lizzo explained.
“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. I’m giving that same energy with a little bit of rap, and I think that people just have to get used to me.”
