![]() |
#lizzo #us #unitedstates #america #music #rap |
Lizzo is a Grammy Award winning flutist, rapper and a singer who has become an international sensation with her body-positive anthems and empowering lyrics. She is an American-born hip-hop artist and a rapper. She has been praised for her unapologetic embrace of her curves and her message of self-love. She has inspired millions of people around the world, esp. women, to embrace their own body as it is. Today, we'll take a small peek into the life of Lizzo and learn from her journey into the music world.
Real name - Melissa Viviane Jefferson
Screen name - Lizzo
Born - April 27, 1988
Height - 5 foot 10 inches (5’10”)
Status - In a relationship with TV Host Myke Wright
Parents - Michael
Jefferson (father) and Shari Johnson-Jefferson
Siblings - Vanessa Jefferson (older sister) and Michael 'Mikey' Jefferson (older brother)
Career highlight - Truth Hurts
Brief background
Lizzo was born Melissa Viviane Jefferson in Detroit (Michigan, USA) in the year 1988. She began playing the flute at quite a young age and performed in her high school marching band. After graduating from high school, she attended the University of Minnesota (Twin Cities, USA), where she studied music education. However, she dropped out after two years to pursue a career in music.
![]() |
Music career
In the year 2015, she released her second studio album 'Big
Grrrl Small World'. The album was even more successful than her debut album. It
featured the hit singles like 'Mykki Blanco' and 'Good As Hell'. Then, she was
able to release her next studio album in the year 2016, which was titled
'Coconut Oil'.
![]() |
Lizzo's T4T sticker at a Toronto (Canada) bus stop |
In the year 2021 (post-COVID), she dropped a single titled
'Rumors' which had a collaboration with fellow-artist Cardi B in it. Then, in
the year 2022, she released her fourth studio album which was titled as
'Special'. The lead single on this album was 'About Damn Time' which went to
reach number one on Billboard Hot 100. Her previous year's album Rumors was
also able to hit the top five on Billboard Hot 100 immediately upon it's debut.
Awards
To begin with, she had won the newspaper City Pages' 'Picked To Click' award for the best new Twin Cities (Minneapolis-Saint Paul area) artist in the year 2013. In 2016, Lizzo had received 8 nominations for the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards. That was the highest number of nominations for any artist in the year 2016. Lizzo has won 3 Grammy Awards, including Best Pop Solo Performance for Truth Hurts, Best Traditional R&B Performance for 'Jerome' and Best Urban Contemporary Album for Cuz I Love You.
![]() |
In the year 2020, she earned 11 nominations at the '2020
Billboard Music Award'. She won the 'Top Song Sales Artist' award on it. In
total, she had won 4 Grammy Awards as of the year 2024. She has also bagged 2
'Soul Train Music Awards', a 'Billboard Music Award' and a 'BET Award' each
throughout her career so far.
Lizzo in movies and TV
Apart from having a music career, she held a brief stint as an actress. In the year 2019, she featured in 2 movies namely Hustlers and UglyDolls. Hustlers is a comedy-crime movie while UglyDolls is an animated movie. She voiced the character Lydia in UglyDolls and played the character Liz in Hustlers. Amazon Prime Video put out a show titled 'Lizzo's Watch Out For The Big Grrrls', which was hosted by Lizzo. The show won her an Emmy Award too (as mentioned before). In the year 2019, she featured on a Netflix movie called 'Someone Great'. What featured on the movie was her song 'Truth Hurts'. After the movie, this track has become a very viral song.
![]() |
Inspired since childhood
She got into music from really early on. When she was just 10 years old, she was sent to learn the flute. She kept learning it for the next 8 years. In the year 2002, she was 14 years old and she formed a small music group with her friends. They called themselves as 'Cornrow Clique'. 4 years later when she turned 18, she began rapping. By then, she had graduated out of school too. She simultaneously enrolled into University Of Houston to study classical music.
![]() |
Lizzo in collaborations and groups
In 2002, at the age of 14, she formed a musical group with her friends which was called Cornrow Clique. That was her maiden participant in a group or a band. In the years 2009 and 2010, she was one of the five-member music group called Ellypseas. In 2011, she was part of an electro-genre group called 'Lizzo & The Larva Ink' and it consisted another musician apart from herself. So it was a duo group. At the same time, she was able to create and became part of a trio-rap group called Chalice. They were able to drop their first album in 2013 as a group. Same year in 2013, she became the member of a hip-hop group called Grrrl Prty. She was part of this five member group upto 2016, when Grrrl Prty disbanded. They released a few tracks in that period.
![]() |
She was able to work with the late Prince along with her ex-group members from Chalice. They briefly regrouped to perform on the song BoyTrouble. The song was on Prince's and 3rdeyegirl's album titled Plectrumelectrum. In the year 2015, she collaborated with Your Smith (formerly Caroline Smith) to make 'Let 'Em Say'. It featured in Season 3 premiere of the US TV-sitcom called Broad City.
In the year 2016, Atlantic Records signed Lizzo up and as a result was out the album titled 'Coconut Oil'. From this album, it's lead song 'Good As Hell' as a soundtrack of the movie 'Barbershop : The Next Cut' (2016). She collaborated in writing each songs on the album along with Christian Rich, Dubbel Dutch, Jesse Shatkin and Ricky Reed. In the year 2018, she performed in a collaboration alongside Florence And The Machine and Haim.
![]() |
Appearances, performances and tours
Lizzo has turned out to be a big star from the music
industry. At the helm of her musical career, she was in great demand in the
market. She was constantly getting featured on screen. The decade between 2012
and 2022 was highly fruitful for Lizzo as a celebrity. Below is a list of all
her famous appearance, performances and tours.
1) In the early years of the 2010s, she performed with the electro genre duo Lizzo & The Larva Ink.
2) In the year 2012, she performed as a member in the trio
Rap and R&B group ‘Chalice’.
3) Lizzo was a member of the hip-hop group ‘Grrrl Party’
which performed it’s final show at Rock The Garden.
4) She toured the UK and USA in the year 2013 in the opening
of ‘Har Mar Superstar', where she sang for the producer Lazerbeak’s band.
5) That same year in 2013, she performed with St. Paul And
The Broken Bones for the song A Change Is Gonna Come Together.
6) She appeared in an interview with Vice (a Canadian-US lifestyle magazine) in the year 2014 to talk about body image.
![]() |
7) In the same year of 2014, she appeared as a musical guest on the ‘Late Show With David Letterman’.
8) In the year 2016, MTV had a live-music performance series
called ‘Wonderland’, where Lizzo was one of the hosts.
9) In the year 2017, she went on a ‘Good As Hell Tour' for
the promotion of her album Coconut Oil.
10) In May 2017, she headlined ‘EEEEEATSCON’ which is an
annual food festival by a New York based restaurant recommendation website
company called Infatuation.
11) The same year in 2017, she appeared as a guest judge on
RuPaul’s Drag Race (10th season).
12) In early part of the year 2018, she toured with Florence
And The Machine and HAIM.
13) In June 2018, she appeared in a campaign called ‘Say It
Louder’ from a Los Angeles based online retailer called ModCloth.
14) In the same month of June 2018, she performed at NYC
Pride’s ‘Pride Island Event’, where she appeared in the first plus-size outfit
for Fashion Institute of Technology’s (FIT, New York) Future Of Fashion Runway
Show.
15) She appeared on Teen Vogue Music Issue that same month
and year in June 2018.
16) In the year 2019, she got into acting and gave her voice performance in the animated movie UglyDolls.
![]() |
Lizzo performing at the MTV VMA in 2019 |
17) That same year in 2019, Lizzo engaged in a supporting role for comedy-crime movie Hustlers.
18) After the month of April in 2019, she performed for the
first time at the Coachella Music Festival.
19) She performed her song Truth Hurts using her flute in
the 2019 BET Awards.
20) In 2019, Lizzo performed on the West Holts stage at the
Glastonbury Festival.
21) She headlined the pride events at Indianapolis and
Sacramento in the year 2019.
22) Lizzo performed a medley of her songs Good As Hell and Truth Hurts at the 2019 MTV Video Music Awards.
23) She was a musical guest on the December 21st,
2019 episode of Saturday Night Live hosted by Eddie Murphy.
24) In the year of January 2020, she went on tour in
Australia and New Zealand, where she headed the FOMO Festival held in 4
Australian cities and Auckland (NZ).
25) Lizzo performed a 'sold-out' show in Sydney Opera House that year and also it was a stage where she had earlier played her flute as a child.
![]() |
27) In the year 2021, she appeared on an interview with the
magazine ‘Variety’.
28) Lizzo reappeared as a musical guest on Saturday Night Live
on the April 16th, 2022 episode.
29) She performed in a cosmic light show event for her 4th
album titled ‘Special’ at New York’s Cipriani 25 Broadway and the event was
called ‘Lizzoverse’, which also got livestreamed on Twitch.
30) Lizzo was invited as a musical guest on Saturday Night
Live on December 17, 2022 which was hosted by Austin Butler.
31) She went on a tour across Europe, North America and
Oceania and it was called ‘The Special Tour’ for her album Special.
32) She dropped a single titled ‘Pink’ which was featured as
an original song for the 2023 movie Barbie’s ‘Barbie The Album’.
33) Lizzo's popularity continued to grow and she began to
tour with some of the biggest names in music including Katy Perry and Miley
Cyrus.
Role model
Lizzo is known for her body-positive songs and her message of love for oneself as well as their own body frame. She has always been speaking out about the importance of accepting ourselves for who we are, regardless of our body shape or our body’s size. She has also been an open critic of diet culture and unrealistic beauty standards in today’s times. In an interview with the magazine Vice, she spoke about body image stating...
“You can wake up and change many things about your appearance, but the inevitability of waking up in your skin is what unifies us”.
![]() |
She struggled with body issues early on as a child. She has a biological issue of being obese and has been body-shamed throughout her musical career. As soon as she began achieving mainstream success, she began advocating for body-positivity and self-love. By body positivity, she vouches for body inclusivity meaning including everyone of every build and to celebrate individuality. Her message of self-love has resonated with millions of people around the world, esp. the ladies. She has inspired people to love their bodies and to love themselves unconditionally. She is a role model for people of all sizes and shapes. Lizzo is a total inspiration to anyone who has ever felt insecure about their body type.
Lizzo is a talented musician, a powerful voice for body positivity and an inspiration to millions of her fans around the world. She is a staunch supporter of the LGBTQA+ community and their causes. On the flipside, she has a strong fanbase in the community and they call themselves ‘Lizzbians’. Although she has been under fire regarding her weight issue, she is a role model today. She is a strong promoter of body positivity, confidence and self-love. She credits social media and the internet for butterfly effect of accepting plus-size women in various industries. She is sure to continue making waves in the music industry for years and years to come.![]() |
1) She is a flutist and plays the flute in her live shows.
2) She is a vegan and has even spoken about the importance
of animal rights.
3) She is a philanthropist who has donated money to various
charities including the NAACP, Planned Parenthood and The Trevor Project.
4) She has been vocal about mental health and has often
talked about her own struggles with anxiety and depression.
5) She is a fashion icon and has been featured in big
magazines such as Elle and Vogue.
6) She is a social media rockstar who has amassed over 10
million followers on Instagram.
7) Lizzo has named her flute as ‘Sasha’.
8) She has a group of backup dancers called ‘Big Grrrls’ and
all it’s members are plus-size performers.
9) The original music video of her track ‘Truth Hurts’ has
gained 220+ million views on the platform YouTube.
10) She grew up as a Christian attending the ‘Church Of God
In Christ’, which is a large Pentecostal denomination in the United States.
![]() |
Lizzo performing with her backup dancers group 'Big Grrrls' |
Lizzo's impact on the music industry and on society as a whole is undeniable. She is a role model for people of all sizes and shapes. She is an inspiration to anyone who has ever felt insecure about themselves or their life. She is sure to continue to make waves in the music for years to come.
#lizzo #music #biography #us #unitedstates #america #rap #hiphop #singer
0 Comments