By Elliott West
“Just about anybody is a big girl in a small world but you gotta believe it on the inside, that you can be bigger than the rest of it”.
Lizzo
Introduction
I have always been a champion of black culture and love when the budding shoots of talent bloom. So it has been enthralling to watch the journey of one young lady who has created her unique brand of music, a mix of rap and classical music accompanied by a flute that she takes you to musical heights. A role model for plus-sized ladies, the Grammy Award winner Melissa Viviane Jefferson, known professionally as Lizzo recently owned the stage at Glastonbury with her barnstorming set. A lady who is a breath of fresh air for mainstream music and someone who has proved that any dream is achieved and the sky is the limit. A watch performer, Lizzo can bring a rainbow to your day and shines sunlight into your soul with her high-energy music.
The Lizzo Dimensions
Lizzo first picked up a flute when she was ten years old and spent the next ten years being classically trained as a flautist by Claudia Momen. Highly inspired by the music of James Galway, she would go on to master this wind instrument. In 2006, she graduated from Alief Elsik High School in Alief and this was when she turned her attention to rap. At 14, Lizzo, a name she had chosen from a variant of Lissa, taken from Jay-Z’s Izzo, formed a band with some of her close friends called Cornrow. However, this stop her love for playing the flute and she would go on to study classical music at the University of Houston. A low point would occur when she was 21, lost her father and ended up sleeping in a car for a year while she pursued her musical dream of becoming a music artist. She dropped out of college and moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota in 2011.
The Real Lizzo
One of the most refreshing things about Lizzo is that she doesn’t define her sexuality, saying that she “doesn’t ascribe to one thing”. Instead, Lizzo believes in following the LGBT principle of the rainbow. A phenomenon that combines every colour of the spectrum with no black and white. The rap sensation has a massive LGBT following and the rainbow flag is always displayed at her concerts. Although recently she admitted to leaning towards being heterosexual.
A Christian and a vegan, Lizzo has often been attacked on social media over the years of her career, body shaming her size. This mainly stems from a Laker’s game she appeared at in 2019 where she sang her song Juice whilst wearing a thong and twerking. It led her to close her Twitter account for a while, leaving the parting Tweet I’ll be back when I feel like it”. A move that she also blamed on there being too many trolls. Since coming back to her account, she has openly spoken out about her struggle with mental health and how it has impacted her career.
The Voice
Lizzo has been highly influenced by the music of Beyonce, Missy Elliot and Lauryn Hill and the fashion sense of Diana Ross. She has also done several music tours, including Good as Hell Tour (2017), Cuz I Love You Tour (2019), Cuz I Love You Too Tour (2019) and The Special Your (2022-2023. She has also been a support act for Haim in 2018 and Florence and the Machine in 2018. The general themes of a Lizzo concert are power, inclusivity and love. She purposefully hires plus-sized dancers to show that you should never be ashamed of who you are and what you look like. A show that is filled with a sea of sequins and glitter and one that is very funky with the odd rigorous flute rendition.
