Lizzo is here to let it out. Body positivity, queerness, the embrace of the self in all its possibilities: For her, the freer, the better. Yes, she’s a singer. And a rapper, and—wouldn’t you know it—a pretty impressive flautist. But she’s also an emblem for the idea that social progress starts from within, that her loving herself (and you loving you) is the first step to fighting the forces that keep marginalized people—Black, female, LGBTQ, and otherwise—down. “I think that there’s a wave right now in human experience where we want to feel good, and we’re seeking out the practice of self-care and self-love,” she told Apple Music in 2020. “I think my music just happened to ebb and flow with the way we’re evolving as a people and a culture.”
Born Melissa Jefferson in 1988, she grew up between Detroit and Houston, making her way through the Minneapolis indie community in her early twenties. She worked steadily through the 2010s, forging a confident, outsized blend of gospel, R&B, hip-hop, and pop before breaking through with 2019’s Cuz I Love You. She could be funny (“I just took a DNA test/Turns out I’m 100% that bitch,” she raps at the beginning of “Truth Hurts”), vulnerable (“Cuz I Love You”), quirky (“Batches & Cookies”), and empowering (“Juice”). In every case, though, her music brings a muchness, a saturated sense of vibrancy and humor and soul and self-assuredness that just kinda makes you feel good. It’s hard to argue it when, upon accepting the 2019 Apple Music Award for Breakthrough Artist of the Year, she said emphatically, “I deserve it!”