It's Lizzo's moment, and we're just lucky to be living in it.
The singer, songwriter, rapper and actress is literally everywhere, gleefully spreading
her message of love, radical self-expression, and rock star confidence.
But what was Lizzo like before crowds of adoring fans were singing her own songs back to her?
This is her incredible transformation.
"Ya'll here we go.”
In April 1988, little Melissa Jefferson made her grand entrance into the world.
A Detroit native, her birth name was given to her by someone very special to her.
She told Interview Magazine,
"When I was born, my father named me Melissa, and I'm still Melissa."
During those formative years in the Motor City, Lizzo imagined a trajectory for herself
that was quite different from how things turned out.
She said,
"I lived in Detroit for about 10 years and I was mostly trying to be a writer or a scientist.
I was all about the smartness in my scholastic career."
While she certainly is well-endowed in the brains department, Lizzo didn't end up working
in a lab.
But for sure, she's a writer - as is evidenced by her lyrics.
After nearly a decade in Detroit, Lizzo and her family moved to Houston, Texas when she
was 9 years old.
At the time, her parents were both very busy working to build up their businesses, and
her older siblings were making their own mark out in the world.
According to The Cut, that left Lizzo to entertain herself, which more often than not, led her
to the radio.
And that's when Lizzo's music education really began to take off.
"Lose My Breath by Destiny's Child.
They're everything.
They gave you the looks, they gave you the style.”
Lizzo told Jezebel,
"I will say I absorbed a lot of music in Houston.
Not being a professional musician and living in Houston, being a teenager and listening
to the radio, was definitely the age of my peak musical absorption."
Nothing was off limits, either, as Lizzo listened to a wide variety of styles.
She added,
"I enjoyed all of the Houston rappers to the indie-rock bands to NSYNC and Backstreet Boys.
Things like that I absorbed heavily and use now."
So just how did Melissa turn into Lizzo?
As it turns out, it was bestowed on her when she was 14, after she launched her first rap
group.
"I'm professor Lizzo and twerk school is now in session.”
She told Interview,
"I got the nickname Lizzo around the time I was in the Cornrow Clique.
I'm from Houston, so naturally, everyone dropped the second syllable of your name and just
put an 'O' there."
For a while, her friends were calling her Mio, which she said she didn't like because
it just didn't feel like the right fit.
She added,
"Then they started calling me Lisso for a while but that just eventually turned into
Lizzo, when you say it more swaggy, and it just kind of stuck with me."
According to The Cut, her name was also influenced by the Jay-Z song "Izzo."
Her nickname may be her signature these days, but Lizzo just wouldn't be Lizzo if she didn't
take Sasha with her everywhere she goes.
And by Sasha, we mean her flute - who probably has more followers than you do, on Instagram.
"This is Sasha flute.
She's very famous.”
Let the record show that Sasha, who was named after Queen B's album Sasha Fierce, doesn't
have time to follow anyone back.
As Lizzo told The Cut, her flute quote "chose her" in the sixth grade, when her band teacher
asked if she was interested in learning how to play.
After that, she joined her school's marching band, where her love of music developed.
Lizzo told NPR,
"I saw a life of concert black and Boston Pops and traveling the world.
When that didn't pan out for me, I was very depressed.”
After that, Lizzo headed to college in 2005, where she burned the candle at both ends with
late-night rap sessions, early morning music classes, and the party life for several years.
But eventually, she had enough.
After dropping out of college, Lizzo entered a dark period of her life, according to The
Cut.
Without the dorms, she was homeless, so she slept in her old Subaru at first, later moving
on to the floor of her band's rehearsal space.
And while her band, Ellypseas, experienced some modest success, they broke up in 2010.
Tragically, that same year, Lizzo's father passed away, sending her on a downward spiral
that just wouldn't quit.
She told Teen Vogue,
"I was addicted to the gym, I didn't eat, and I was sleeping in a dusty car, all for
music.
I thought my life was over."
Exhausted, Lizzo finally left Houston and joined her mother in Denver.
But less than a year later, she headed to Minneapolis, where a friend told her the music
scene was blowing up.
Lizzo finally found a foothold, and started bands like The Chalice and GRRRL PRTY.
But even though she had experienced rock-bottom, Lizzo managed to take something away from
those tough times: her unapologetic body positivity.
"That's my good side.
That's my good side!”
She told Teen Vogue,
"That's just the society we're all unfortunately born in - the one where you have to hit your
worst and hate yourself in order to love yourself.
Those laws only exist because self-hate is so prevalent.
Body positivity only exists because body negativity is the norm."
"America's ideals of beauty is, you know, very narrow.”
Although many call Lizzo a trailblazer, she takes it all with a grain of salt, saying,
"It's bizarre to me that what I'm saying and doing is revolutionary, because it should
be so innate and first-nature.
We should love ourselves first."
Just two years after she hit the Minneapolis scene, Lizzo released her first studio album,
Lizzobangers.
And as Lizzo tells it, her debut album was developed and recorded, quote, "in Ryan Olson's
studio, with [Lazerbeak], and a lot of beer," according to The 405.
"I was like lookin' and gettin’ inspired, and getting lit in the studio, freestylin
and making all these bomb ass songs, and I was like damn I really got, Stella got her
peach back.”
Lizzo opened up about her writing process for the album, telling the outlet,
"When I'm hit with a good streak of inspiration, I write as fast as a freestyle.
Then, when I'm done I go back over the lyrics and tweak here and there.
I just listen to the beats until I feel a rhythm and rhyme."
The album was lauded for its feminist-forward message, and Lizzo's technical abilities,
as well as her endearing, quote, "screwball moments."
"That's where our bread and butter is.”
Lizzobangers dropped with a bang, and Lizzo really started to get noticed.
She even caught the attention of the most famous musician in all of Minneapolis: Prince.
She was featured on "BoyTrouble" on his 2014 album Plectrumelectrum, per NPR.
"He like let us do whatever we wanted, he said pretend as if the song is yours.
He's so gracious and giving.
And so talented.”
Lizzo then embarked on a tour opening for Sleater-Kinney in 2015, according to Billboard,
which put her in front of an entirely new audience.
That same year, she dropped her second album, Big Grrrl Small World, which Lizzo admits
was a happier, gentler, less angry record.
She told The Guardian,
"I think that I developed as a songwriter.
I did less sitting down and writing in a journal and more freestyling in the studio, which
made a huge difference."
As if 2015 wasn't a big enough year for the artist, 2016 proved to be just as thrilling.
She landed a gig as one of the hosts of MTV's Wonderland - a show featuring live and unique
performances, per MTV News.
"Yo somebody say something we can rap about.”
While it was definitely an enviable gig to land, Lizzo had other things she was working
on that took priority over a career in TV.
Lizzo released her EP Coconut Oil in 2016 with Atlantic Records, telling Rolling Stone,
"A lot of my fans are backpackers and white kids, but as much as I love that, when I got
to tour with SZA I saw black women in the audience, and the way they connected with
my music was different than I had experienced.
I wanted to do a song that celebrated that and also celebrated myself."
Anyone who's been following Lizzo from the outset surely has noticed how much her fashion
sense has evolved, something she acknowledges as well, telling Vogue,
"My style went from 'mommy, let me dress myself' to 'damn, that b---- is fine!"
"Mark Jacobs is the homie, so you know he better make clothes for my big ass.”
The change in Lizzo's style marked a general shift in culture as well.
She told the magazine,
"I feel like I've always dressed for my shape and made sure that I looked comfortable, but
now there's an edge to what I'm doing.
It pushes fashion boundaries and I think that that's really special because you don't really
see a lot of big girls doing that.
The visibility isn't granted to us."
You can continue to expect her to rock lots of bold, eye-catching style, especially on
stage.
She says,
"It's really important for me and the Big Girls to be able to feel comfortable, but
to [also] be able to show off our bodies and celebrate our curves on stage."
"Hey what are you doing in my bathroom?
I'm just kidding.
Alright here we go.”
In the true spirit of self-care, Lizzo started therapy in 2018, which wasn't an easy decision
for her to make.
She admitted to Rolling Stone,
"That was really scary.
But going on that journey of being vulnerable with someone who I didn't know, and then learning
how to be vulnerable with people that I do know, gave me the courage to be vulnerable
as a vocalist."
"I had to dig really deep and discover the thing that truly made me beautiful.”
In April 2019, Lizzo released her first full-length album, Cuz I Love You.
According to Consequence of Sound, the 11-track record is an exceptionally intimate offering
from Lizzo, who says that much of the lyrical content was pulled directly from her personal
experiences.
She revealed,
"There's literal specifics here.
You're in the scene of a movie: my movie, my life."
As much as Lizzo embraces diversity in all things, there's one thing she does to honor
her heritage.
She told Allure in 2019,
"I wear black hair.
I think it's really important as a black woman to do that because black women representing
black things makes a bigger mark.
We're going to represent for us, by us."
"Once I started wearing weaves, it was over.”
Lizzo also uses social media to feature full-body selfies, often no holds-barred.
She shared with Essence,
"I love creating shapes with my body, and I love normalizing the dimples in my butt
or the lumps in my thighs or my back fat or my stretch marks.
I love normalizing my Black-ass elbows.
I think it's beautiful."
"I have 680 selfies.”
After Lizzo enjoyed both a stellar Coachella performance and a monumental set at the Glastonbury
Festival in 2019, all signs point to the world being her oyster.
But at her core, Lizzo continues to remain true to her authentic self, regardless of
the current cultural climate.
She told Allure,
"The body-positive movement is the body-positive movement, and we high five.
We're parallel.
But my movement is my movement.
When all the dust has settled on the groundbreaking-ness, I'm going to still be doing this."
Fortunately for her fans, Lizzo doesn't plan on marching to the beat of anyone else's drum.
She added,
"I'm not going to suddenly change.
I'm going to still be telling my life story through music.
And if that's body positive to you, amen.
That's feminist to you, amen.
If that's pro-black to you, amen.
Because ma'am, I'm all of those things."
"That's a wrap on Lizzo, ya'll!”
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