Minneapolis just embraced me. There are a lot of weirdos here. It's awesome, because I'm a weirdo. Thankfully, the city embraced me with open arms. A lot about Minneapolis helped carve my musicality and open my eyes. The whole town is so open-minded compared to like, you know, Texas.
Lizzo
I love kimonos because you can just throw them on over anything. Ever since I got my first kimono from Lane Bryant in high school and thought, 'This is amazing; I can wear it with everything!'
I work on myself daily to be a better person. When I react in a negative way to somebody, I sit back and think about why I did it, so I'm always working on myself, and my music is the same.
I'm glad I'm a woman; I'm glad I'm a rapper because I get to speak to these people who did not get spoken for in this genre.
The fight still isn't people of colour versus white. It's the people versus the system built to keep us down. That's the first line of the Constitution. And the system is manmade but is made of no man. Everyone, regardless of class, creed, culture and ethnicity can fight the system and help to break it down.
Every time I rap about being a big girl in a small world, it's doing a couple things: it's empowering my self-awareness, my body image, and it's also making the statement that we are all bigger than this; we're a part of something bigger than this, and we should live in each moment knowing that.
My mother and father taught me about black excellence and dynasty. They experienced racism personally, and when something like that happens to you and not around you, you develop a different perception than someone who has never experienced racism a day in their lives.
My formative years were in Houston. I was in middle school, and everyone was dropping the last half of their names and adding an 'o' to the end. My little crew that I had, we were an all-female rap group, and everyone had an 'o' at the end of their name. I was Lisso. Then this dude started getting lazy with it, saying Lizzo.
Seeing people catch a feeling in their spirit and sprint the aisles of the church while my cousins played driving, uplifting gospel stuck with me. I let that same feeling wash over me when I experience and perform music.
If you are confident in yourself and however you want yourself to be presented, and you're doing well and doing it because you want to do it and not because someone is pressuring you, then more power to you.
I knew a lot of girls who just wanted to be famous, and if that's your goal, that's awesome; that just wasn't enough for me.
Everyone looks to an artist for something more than just the music, and that message of being comfortable in my own skin is number one for me.
I don't really shop a lot. I order things online. When I travel, I'll get some pieces along the way.
When I first saw Destiny's Child, I was in the fifth grade, and it made me want to sing and make music, and there would be these freestyles on the radio for what seemed like hours; it was just so cool to me.
I don't look to celebrities for style anymore because I've learned the chain of command. They are being dressed by a stylist who's getting inspiration from a 16-year-old kid running the streets of Melbourne, Australia. Once I learned that chain of command, I just started taking it to the streets.
When we're on stage doing a song about positive body image or another about female empowerment, everyone out there is super into it and right there with us. It's been awesome. I feel like we fit right in.
There's a lot of influences that I have from Detroit that are subliminal. I mean, I spent the first 10 years of my life there. My mom and dad were born and raised there, so a lot of that rubbed off on me. When I get angry, sometimes a Detroit accent comes out.
I like that I'm not typical. I like that I'm called 'no-genre hip-hop.'
When I was born, my father named me Melissa, and I am still Melissa, but I got the nickname Lizzo around the time I was in the Cornrow Clique.
I spent a lot of time star-gazing, writing, and learning languages when the other kids were doing cooler things in Detroit.
I feel like I've started to create my own culture of being a voice for something, and that's what people want to know about. I love that because I am a woman and because I a rap, and I look the way I look, I can connect with the demographic of people who feel like they have a voice in me.
When I was 19, I joined a rock band, and that's when I began to say, 'Okay, this is something that I could take seriously.' When I came to Minneapolis, it just refined everything.
I was raised on gospel. I remember hip-hop and rock music were secular, so basically, for my first ten years living in Detroit, I was on gospel. But when I moved to Houston, that's when I got to open up my musical horizons.
Dress for your body type. Some people are blessed enough to be able to throw on something that Beyonce wears and it looks amazing. If I try to go against the grain and wear something that my body doesn't like, it's going to show.
First Avenue is one of my favorite places to play. All along, they've treated me with respect.
From a young age, I saw and placed importance on spirituality within religion.
I enjoy female rappers, not because they're female but because I can connect to them more.
I'm not a girl who started getting into music and using my femininity to get attention. When I was getting into it, it was all pure skill.
No one said, 'This is the best female rapper.' It's more like, 'Lizzo can really rap.' I think its because I'm not that sexy girl. I'm that beast girl.
I was so moved by music that I wanted to create it as well, but once you decide that's what you want to do with your life, to be successful, you have to be business-minded, too.
