Lizzo opened up about the stigma of pop music and how she feels it is used to segregate black artists, in a new interview with Entertainment Weekly,
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The “About Damn Time” singer said, “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.”
She further explained that genres were like “code words.” She used the example of R&B music going on to develop hip-hop and rap.
“I think when you think about pop, 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,” she continued,
Lizzo finished her thoughts by saying it’s important to remember that pop “has a racist origin,” which makes it all the more special that hip-hop and rap artists have found their way into the pop sphere. “Rap is running the game,” she said.
Elsewhere in the conversation, she touched on the backlash she has faced from people thinking her music “wasn’t black enough.”
“I think anything that’s new, people are going to criticize and feel like it’s not for them,” Lizzo said. “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 s***. You missing out.”
Lizzo recently celebrated her 2023 Grammy nomination writing on Twitter, “I JUST WOKE UP WHATS GOING ON?!?!?” She earned nominations in the major categories of Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Album of the Year, and Best Pop Vocal Album.
(Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for dcp)
