52 | Rolling Stone | February 2020
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SHOES^ BY^ PLEASER.inspired by the “Tiny Dancer” scene in Almost
Famous, and “Truth Hurts” was her first choice.
Someone Great changed everything. “Waking
up the next morning, we tangibly felt things were
different,” Davis recalls. “Truth Hurts” began
climbing up Shazam’s and iTunes’ charts as it
rocketed around on social media. Younger lis-
teners were simultaneously discovering the song
through “DNA test” memes on TikTok.
Suddenly, Lizzo’s two-year-old song, a song not
even featured on her new album, was a smash,
topping the ROLLING STONE 100 songs chart.
Then, after performing a medley of “Truth Hurts”
and 2016’s “Good as Hell” at the MTV Video
Music Awards, the latter song became Lizzo’s
second sleeper hit.
Meanwhile, songwriters Justin and Jeremiah
Raisen accused her of lifting the opening line of
“Truth Hurts” (“I just took a DNA test, turns out
I’m 100% that bitch”) from a demo they worked
on together. The line had been inspired by an In-
stagram meme Lizzo had seen, originating from
a tweet by singer Mina Lioness. Lizzo responded
with a lawsuit alleging harassment and offering an
official writing credit to Lioness. “The creator of
the tweet is the person I am sharing my success
with. Not these men,” she wrote in a statement.
Lizzo is diplomatic about her weird career tra-
jectory. No one can exactly plan for multiple old
singles to suddenly pop after releas-
ing an album full of new material.
“When we were making it we knew
it was ahead of its time,” she says.
“Now we have the proof that these
songs are timeless. They will con-
nect when they need to connect.”
WHEN I BROUGHT a friend to see
Lizzo perform at Brooklyn Steel
this past May, she cried. We’re
both roughly the same size as the
pop star, wide and curvy, with leg
dimples and arm flab and round
bellies.
She cried because she has never
been able to say that about a person
she saw performing onstage before,
let alone a plus-size performer belt-
ing, rapping, and dancing instead
of standing still with her body cov-
ered. In a world where we were
told to believe that slightly curvier-
than-average features on the slim figures of Jenni-
fer Lopez, Beyoncé, or Kim Kardashian are some-
how extraordinary, it felt radical.
“It’s completely life-changing,” plus-size fash-
ion designer and influencer Gabi Gregg says, giv-
ing credit to Beth Ditto and Missy Elliott for help-
ing pave that way. “When you get to see her, it’s
so impactful and almost brings tears to your eyes
because [you think], ‘I knew that was missing my
whole life but I had no idea how much it would
mean to actually see it.’ ”
Gregg first became a fan of Lizzo when the
pop star dropped the video for 2015’s “My Skin,”
a raw ballad about learning to love yourself, that
featured a more natural look than her usual
glam. “I wrote ‘My Skin’ when I was 26, so at
that point I had already gotten to a place where
I’m confronting myself and I’m happy with it,”
Lizzo explains.
Her late teens and early twenties were marred
by low self-esteem worsened by a toxic lover’s de-
sire for a thin girlfriend. “My Skin” reflects years
of work she had done to unlearn the ways society
had told her to hate herself. “I’ve come to terms
with body dysmorphia and evolved,” she says.
“The body-positive movement is doing the same
thing. We’re growing together, and it’s growing
pains, but I’m just glad that I’m attached to some-
thing so organic and alive.”
Soon after “My Skin,” Lizzo’s team reached out
to Gregg for advice. The singer was beginning to
change up her game from the flannel and Duck
boots she swore by in Minnesota. Gregg helped
Lizzo’s stylist find brands that catered to plus-
size bodies, and later appeared in the video for
“ Scuse Me.” “I was thinking about how meaning-
ful this moment in time is for plus-size women,”
Gregg reflects. “Things are really changing.”
There’s change, but the progress isn’t always
so clear. In December, Lizzo’s body became fod-
der for more debates when she dared to twerk
at a Lakers game in a dress that exposed her
thong-wearing ass. Peeved Lakers fans accused
her of violating the “family friend-
ly” event and compared her body
and outfit to that of a professional
wrestler; Twitter users fixated on
faces of players and attendees that
showed mild, and quite possibly
unrelated, disgust.
Lizzo seems a touch exhaust-
ed talking about her body, which
is fair. She wants to be celebrat-
ed for her music — and not seen as
“brave” for doing so. “I’m so much
more than that. Because I actual-
ly present that, I have a whole ca-
reer,” she says. “It’s not a trend.”MELISSA JEFFERSON WAS never sure
she could be a solo star, so for most
of her life she joined groups. The
first was her family church’s choir
in Detroit. She wasn’t known as
“the singer,” and that was OK: She
was the “smart one,” with dreams
of being an astronaut. In her spare time, she
wrote fantasy stories about strong women she
one day hoped to emulate, and began a lifelong
love for anime like Sailor Moon.
When she was nine years old, her parents
moved Melissa and her two older siblings to Hous-
ton. Shari and Michael Jefferson owned a real es-
tate business, and Texas offered lucrative oppor-
tunities. “I was like, ‘Wait, what the hell?’ ” Lizzo
recalls. “I didn’t even get to really process leav-
ing, and I was like, ‘Now we about to be around
all these horses and cowboys.’ ”
Down South, she found something she was
best at: the flute. Her instrument was chosen forher in a mandatory band class, and it felt like
fate. “I was just so good at flute,” she explains. “[I
thought], ‘This is it for me. I’m going to college
for this shit.’ I knew back then.” Outside of band,
Lizzo was made fun of in class for know-it-all hab-
its: “I would always raise my hand, and they be
like, ‘Damn, how many questions you gonna an-
swer, nerd?’ ”
She was “private” but still outgoing enough to
audition friends for a Destiny’s Child-inspired girl
group. The first song she wrote for the group was
called “Broken Households” — about children,
unlike herself, who grew up in broken homes.
Lizzo still didn’t feel like she could sing, so she
directed the other members to belt out the sad
tune. Eventually, she formed Cornrow Clique,
her first proper band. The lineup featured three
friends who went by Nino, Lexo, and Zeo. Melis-
sa became “Lisso.”
By high school, she had transitioned from nerd
to class clown. It came from the same place as
her know-it-all tendencies: “a desire to be lis-
tened to,” she says. She enrolled at the Univer-
sity of Houston to study music, but college was
a struggle: “Math. Walking on campus, that big-
ass school. Money.” The pressure mounted, and
she dropped out when she was 20. Leaving col-
lege meant abandoning the dreams of becoming
a professional flutist.
She continued rapping with a friend from the
since-disbanded Cornrow Clique, but self-doubt
began to creep in: The friend she continued to
perform with seemed better-suited for success.
“I always thought she was the more special one
’cause she was thinner than me, and the boys
liked her and stuff. ‘Let me just write the raps and
support her.’ ”
The duo ended, along with the friendship, and
Lizzo’s next couple of years in Houston were pep-
pered with guilt, fear, and embarrassment. She
auditioned for a prog-rock band called Ellypseas,
lying about her level of singing experience. She
got the gig, but at the expense of severe nerves
that she treated each night with shots of whiskey
before going onstage. Fans loved her energetic,
sometimes erratic stage presence, but she was still
unhappy, hiding her new band from friends, who
she feared wouldn’t like the music.
Lizzo quit Ellypseas in 2010, a year after her
dad died. She feared that giving up college and
her dreams had let him down. “My dad was an ad-
vocate for my flute, and he wanted me to go back
to college really badly,” she says. “He was going
around trying to get money from my cousins to
put me back in school. And I’m like, ‘I’m not going
back to school.’ I didn’t tell him that though.”
Lizzo struggled to make ends meet, living out
of her Subaru for a period. In 2011, a friend and
collaborator was planning a move to Minneapo-
lis and invited Lizzo to come along. Ready for a
change of scenery, she took a chance.
In Minneapolis, Lizzo was rapping again, and
at the time was one of the few black women in
the city doing so. She and Eris soon formed the
Chalice, another Destiny’s Child-inspired girl
group. The group became local“I WAS TOO
WEIRD FOR
THE RAPPERS
AND TOO
BLACK FOR
THE INDIES [IN
MINNEAPOLIS].
TO HAVE BEEN
EMBRACED BY
PRINCE — I’M
ETERNALLY
GRATEFUL.”LIZZO
[Cont. on 92]