Melissa Jefferson grew up in the Pentecostal church, where her family believed that secular music was evil - now she's the popstar Lizzo, who recently released her third studio album, "Cuz I Love You," chock full of bops about body positivity, and recently stormed through a set at Coachella in a series of sparkly leotards.
Lizzo attended the University of Houston and majored in music, playing the piccolo in her school's marching band. The major came in handy during her Weekend Two Coachella performance.
"If they ain’t gonna get the music right, I’m gonna get the music right," Lizzo told the crowd after asking them to cut the sound and busting out her flute. “That’s why I got my music major.”
While Lizzo was previously nervous about using her old instrument on tracks, the flute can now be heard on many of her songs and she’s started playing it on the road.
“I have snuck her into all of my records, but this is the first time my flute was front and center, and there's no going back now. I've been warning people, ‘You just wait until this nerd gets into hip-hop. I will make everybody love the flute again'" Lizzo told NPR. She’s even been dubbed “Sasha Flute” - playing on Beyonce’s Sasha Fierce alter ego.
After college, Lizzo moved to Minneapolis to make music in 2010. She ended up linking up with Prince, who asked her to record at Paisley Park.
“It gave me confidence to be an artist, not just a rapper or a singer or a girl in a band,” she said about the experience.
In 2016, she signed with Atlantic Records. That same year, she released a video as part of StyleLikeU’s “That’s What’s Underneath Project,” where she shed layers and talked about accepting herself and being happy with who she is. “I’m done with the struggle, I just want to enjoy my life now,” she says in the video.
Much of her music deals with body positivity, a topic she began addressing in her early twenties.
“I remember I had this epiphany that this was it. I think I was like, 21, because that was the worst year of my life thus far: My father passed away, I was homeless, I didn't have any money, my band was doing really badly and I was by myself. I hadn't been eating because I didn't have money, and I was honestly the smallest physically I'd ever been — and still, that was the worst I'd ever felt about myself,” she said on NPR.
More recently, she’s gone viral for her friendship with Janelle Monae, another of Prince's protegees.
When Lizzo interviewed the "Pynk" singer, they discussed the boy's club mentality of the music industry. “I think women are phased out of creative industries by the quote-unquote ‘boy’s club’ way early on. It’s more than just getting them the job — it's giving them the training, making them feel comfortable enough to make mistakes and lean into something and have a girl’s club. So they can get all the experience they need to be at the top of the game," Lizzo said.
Lizzo also hit the stage with Monae at Coachella, when they both twerked. Lizzo picked up her twerking style from New Orleans bounce artist Big Freedia, who she later collaborated with on hit single "Karaoke."
"That track needed the right voice and the right energy. Lizzo nailed it!” Big Freedia told Teen Vogue when Lizzo was their cover star.
Much of Lizzo's latest album deals with what she calls her "movement."
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. 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."
She's also made a statement with her ensembles, which have included shimmering leotards, florals, feathers, neon green ruffles on the red carpet and hot pink crystal creations. She's also called out designers for not offering enough options for plus size women.
“If you’re not making clothes for me, and if you don’t want to make clothes for me, I don’t want to wear your [designs]. I look good in other [things] anyway. But call me if you want to dress me. If you want to change the game and dress a fat body, call me," she told Allure.
Lizzo is very comfortable in her own skin, doing her own thing.
“I’m a very, very single b****,” she told PEOPLE. “But even if I were in a relationship, I’m a single-minded individual, and I really like my freedom. I think there’s a lot of people that need to be in relationships and need to be in love. I want it sometimes, but I don’t need it."
She's also been outspoken about what the body positive movement means to her.
“It’s unfair for us to assume that people know how to love themselves ... [corporations have] spent decades telling people they weren’t good enough and selling them an ideal of beauty. All of a sudden you’re selling them self-love? People don’t know how to love themselves, because they were trying to look like the motherf****r you were selling them!” she said in a Guardian interview
And now, at 31, Lizzo says she feels especially confident and able to speak out.
“If I was 19 right now, I would be f***ing terrified. But I’m older, I’m wiser, I’m feeling like I’m getting actualized. I genuinely care about living a quality life, and if y’all gonna look up to that, then that’s cool! I want people to be happier. I’ve seen how sick the world is, I’ve seen how sad people can be—I’ve been that person—and I genuinely want to use my gifts and the talents that I was blessed with to make sure that s***t is even a fraction less sad than it is now,” she told EW.
“I learned that age isn’t real. I learned that we don’t really realize how young we are in our minds. I thought that by now I’d be levitating and mature. A lot of people — not me, though — thought they would be married, with kids. A lot of people I know that are 25 feel that about themselves and aren’t. Your twenties are for yourself and no one else. You should spend them selfishly learning how to unlearn all that shit we were taught as kids about getting older,” she told Rolling Stone.
The performer turned 31 on April 27, proving that just like Chardonnay, she gets better over time.
Lizzo's best lyrics
'No, I'm not a snack at all, look, baby, I'm the whole damn meal'
'Somebody come get this man I think he got lost in my DMs'
'I like chardonnay, get better over time'
'Why a man great till they gotta be great'
'I just took a DNA test, turns out I'm 100% that b****'
'Look up in the mirror, oh my God, it's me, so much Prada on me, I'm a prodigy'
'I woke up in this, I woke up in this - in my skin'
