Lizzo Speaks On Making White Music: "It Challenges My Identity"

Would you say Lizzo has ‘crossed-over’ in a musical sense? Well, recently on the The Howard Stern Show, the singing sensation wholeheartedly spoke her mind about how she feels when critics speak negative of her and her music. Stern lit the stove by asking Lizzo to “address” the remarks she receives about “making white music.”

Lizzo told Stern: “[It is] very hurtful only because I am a Black woman. I feel like it challenges my identity and who I am. It diminishes that, which I think is really hurtful. And on the other end, I’m making funky, soulful, feel-good music that is so similar to a lot of Black music that was made for Black people in the ’70s and ’80s.” The “About Damn Time” singer noted she feels music ought of be for everyone.

She continued: “Then, on top of that, my message is literally for everybody and anybody. And I don’t try to gatekeep my message from people. So, I’m like, you don’t even get me at all. I feel like a lot of people truthfully don’t get me, which is why I wanted to do the documentary. I feel like y’all don’t get me. Y’all don’t know where I came from. And now, I don’t want to answer no more questions about this s**t. I just want to show the world who I am.”

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Lizzo isn’t a stranger to the ‘white music’ critiques. In October, she spoke to Vanity Fair in her cover interview: “I am not making music for white people. I am a Black woman; I am making music from my Black experience, for me to heal myself [from] the experience we call life. If I can help other people, hell yeah. Because we are the most marginalized and neglected people in this country. We need self-love and self-love anthems more than anybody.”

Lizzo white music — Lizzo claps back any naysayers claiming she only makes ‘white music’

And, in a previous interview with Entertainment Weekly, Lizzo expressed: “Genre’s racist inherently. I think if people did any research, they would see that there was race music, and then there was pop music. Race music was their way of segregating Black artists from being mainstream because they didn’t want their kids listening to music created by Black and brown people because they said it was demonic and yada, yada, yada.”