Before Lizzo would take the world by storm with her tacks Truth Hurts and Juice cracking
the billboard 100 and her album Cuz I Love you Peaking at #6 on the Hot 200
Before Lizzo would clock in 4.1 Million Instagram followers and would go viral with her Flute
and Shoot videos and her
Sasha Flute would have it's own 235K followers at the time of this recording.
Before Lizzo would land a role in the film Hustlers opposite Jennifer Lopez and Cardi
B.
Before Lizzo would win over the world with her outlandish fashion, candid interviews
and bizarre social media game.
Mix Aretha Franklin with Cardi B plus add in a little Ron Burgangy and Jazz Flute and
you get yourself Lizzo, the latest and greatest American superstar since Lil Nas X.
Much like more stars of recent years Lizzo took full advantage of social media to make
herself a house hold name but she's been working in the biz for a very long time.
You can even see her in the back at these BET Awards from a couple years back.
Lizzo seems like the life of the party now but being a big girl trying to make it in
the entertainment industry hasn't been an easy road to success.
There was a time when she was living in her car, then her dad passed away and she was
ready to give up altogether!
Not to fret, things worked out just fine, she's even getting shoutouts from the Legend
himself.
What's going on guys?
It's your boy Michael McCrudden hitting you guys with a brand new Before They Were Famous
this time on Lizzo.
My LA Host Jeremy been telling me to do this video for months now so I'm happy were finally
getting er done.
This channel feeds off your requests so you guys gotta let us know who is next in the
comments down below.
If you like this video you might want to check out our recent drops including Normani and
Chloe X Halle.
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a channel member or on Patreon.
Big love to all members of the Fame Gang, aright, let's get into this video.
Trivia question – what Jay Z song inspired her moniker Lizzo?
Sound off down below.
Lizzo was born Melissa Vivian Jefferson on April 27th 1988 in good ol' Detroit Michigan
to parents Michael & Shari and two older siblings Vanessa & Mikey.
Her parents were middle class entrepreneurs running their own business who were heavily
involved in their church and encouraged young Lizzo to perform Gospel music at a young age.
Before music would consume her life Lizzo was really into her schooling with plans on
becoming either a writer or a scientist.
In fact one day her second career math teacher her to bring her mom into the school because
young Melissa was trying to teach the class.
She told Rolling Stone: I was this little girl, and I was like giving
it to the teacher like, ‘You need to teach us better!'
Cause she was always going on tangents, talking about how we need to wash our hair.
And I’m like, ‘Girl, teach math!
Lizzo has sharred a number of emotional posts about her family via IG.
My beautiful family.
I’m so thankful to share this energetic DNA, there’s no one on this planet I am
closer to.
Thank you for showing me how to lead.
Thank you for being my will to live after daddy passed.
Thank you for supporting me even though I am stubbornly self-sufficient.
Thank you for allowing me to be myself.
I know y’all don’t be on social media like that lol... but I wanna scream from the
mountain tops my love for you.
After nearly a decade in Detroit, Lizzo and her family moved down to Houston, Texas when
she was 9 or 10 years old.
At the time, her parents were both very busy working to build up their businesses, and
her older siblings were busy with school and friends which left a lonely Lizzo spending
a ton of time listening to the radio.
I couldn't find video on Lizzo from this time in her life but she did tag this video as
looking like a young her so let's roll that.
She would spend countless hours listening to pop hits like NSYNC and the Backstreet
Boys to indie rock bands and local Houston rappers soaking up everything.
Her personal fav include Beyonce and Missy Elliot, in fact she's obsessed with the latter.
In the sixth grade her music teacher asked her if
she was interested in playing an instrument.
Lizzo explained that the flute chose her and she soon after joined the school's marching
band.
The desire began to build up inside her to start her own career as a performer but at
the time she didn't yet envision herself as a star, she told Rolling Stone:
I never believed in myself as a solo artist.
I didn’t think anyone wanted to look at me or hear what I had to say.
So instead she would form girl groups with her friends, the first at 14 was known as
Cornrow Clique.
Apparently in Houston there is a thing where people drop the second syllable of someones
name and just put an O there.
So her friends started calling her Mio but that wasn't working so then Lisso and then
Lizzo cause it had more swagger.
Also Jay Z's track Izzo was all the rage at the time and kind of lent itself to her rap
name perfectly.
If you got it right in the comments I'll follow you over on IG.
Besides singing and dancing Lizzo realized that she could rap which made her popular
— but she was also still in the marching band, so she wasn’t cool.
People would tease her that she smiled too much and laughed too loud.
Sometimes she wore hippie clothes and listened to Radiohead and Death Cab for Cutie because
and even wore Uggs.
Classmates starting teasing her saying that she was too white.
In 2005, Lizzo made the move to theUniversity of Houston on a music scholarship, but here
she burned the candle at both ends with late-night rap sessions, early morning music classes,
and the schools party life which kept her in school for more years than planned.
Eventually she dropped out of school and had no back up plans but to make in entertainment.
Thus, we enter the more difficult times in her career.
For a short time she found herself homeless sleeping in her Subaru then on the floor of
her band Ellypseas rehearsal space.
That same year, Lizzo was met with tragedy when her father passed away, this absolutely
devastated her and she's opened up about this experience more via IG.
In an Instagram post speaking about her dad she said:
10 years ago was the worst day of my life.
Cryin alone in my car on st Patrick’s day cus my daddy died.
I lost my superstar.
I got blackout drunk on strawberry moonshine and wanted to die.
I quit singing.
I quit trying.
10 years later I am the superstar he worked so hard for me to become.
At the time she was also the smallest she had ever been.
I was addicted to the gym, I didn't eat, and I was sleeping in a dusty car, all for music
but even then, she recalls a man putting her down about her weight.
Fed up with how things were panning out Lizzo finally left Houston and joined her mother
in Denver, where she had moved.
But after just ten months, she headed to Minneapolis in 2011, where a friend told her the music
scene was really starting to take off.
It was here that Lizzo finally found some stable ground and started bands like The Chalice
and GRRRL PRTY
. Then on one fateful night in 2012, she posted a tweet, expressing her desire to work with
Lazerbeak, a well-known Minneapolis producer.
To her surprise, he responded, and he said he'd accept some Mike's Hard Lemonade as payment
instead of cash.
From then on, I guess he wanted to work with me, and Twitter made it happen.
So thanks, Twitter!
Lizzo then signed to Olson's label, Totally Gross National Product.
Finally, it was all happening!
In 2013, just two years after her relocation to Minneapolis, Lizzo released her first studio
album, Lizzobangers, on the Totally Gross National Product label.
As Lizzo herself tells it, her debut album was developed and recorded
In Ryan Olson's studio, with [Lazerbeak], and a lot of beer
Her debut project even caught the attention of the most famous Minneapolis native artist
at the time - Prince and Lizzo was featured on “Boy Trouble” off his 2014 album Piectrumectrum.
She would later sign to Atlantic drop two more albums and blow the world away via social
media posts like this one.
& from there on out, let's just say a star was born!
No seriously though, she's even recreated the famous Flute scene from Ron Burgandy.
As for the rest of the story...