Lizzo opens up about racial stigmas in pop music, says the genre “has a racist origin”

Lizzo has spoken openly about the racial stigmas and biases she says are “inherent” in pop music, explaining that by way of segregationist efforts, the genre “has a racist origin”.

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The topic was broached in a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, with whom Lizzo spoke to promote her new documentary Love, Lizzo. In one scene of the film – which arrived on HBO Max last Thursday (November 24) – the artist mentions the backlash she’s faced over her style and music “not being Black enough”.

Asked by journalist Gerrad Hall if she considers the root of that backlash that to be “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”, Lizzo answered in the affirmative, declaring her perspective to be that “[the] genre’s racist inherently”.

She explained: “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.”

From there, Lizzo continued, Black artists were forced to create their own pop-adjacent genres that operated “almost like code words” – R&B was her primary example, “and then of course eventually hip-hop and rap was born from that”.

“I think when you think about pop,” she added, “you think about MTV in the ’80s talking about ‘We can’t play rap music’ or ‘We can’t put this person on our platform because we’re thinking about what people in the middle of America think’ – and we all know what that’s code for.”

Lizzo went on to say that in the present age of mainstream music, “we have this well-oiled pop machine, but remember that it has a racist origin”. She delivered a positive take on the situation, though, noting that “the coolest thing [she’s] seen is rap and hip-hop artists becom[ing] pop”.

On the current state of pop music, she said: “Now pop music is really rap in its DNA – rap is running the game, and I think that’s so cool. 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.

“I think anything that’s new, people are going to criticize and feel like it’s not for them. But once you know what it is – just like I’ve got a friend who don’t like avocado but she likes guacamole; it don’t make no sense – but once you get used to something, it might be for you.”

In closing, Lizzo honed in on the avocado-guacamole example, saying that “for people who don’t like pop music or don’t like Black artists that make pop music”, she might eventually “be guacamole to them”.

Love, Lizzo came amid a hectic month for its subject, between the release of her Amazon Music single and the announcements of new North American tour dates and a headlining appearance at next year’s Open’er festival. She’ll also tour the UK next year, with this current stint of touring coming hot on the heels of her recent second album, ‘Special’.

In a four-star review of the album – which featured singles like ‘About Damn Time’, ‘Grrrls’ and ‘2 Be Loved (Am I Ready)’ – NME’s Nick Levine wrote: “Lizzo knows exactly who she is as an artist and what she wants to achieve: she’s the bad bitch with an incredible talent for making people feel good.”

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