Lizzo to critics who say she writes “music for white people”: “I don’t try to gatekeep my message”

Lizzo has opened up about one of her critics’ common arguments – that she writes “music for white people” – telling Howard Stern that such an accusation is “very hurtful”.

The artist appeared on The Howard Stern Show yesterday (December 13), and a portion of her chat with the media personality addressed her recent HBO Max documentary, Love, Lizzo.

In one notable scene during the film, Lizzo points out that she’s often criticised for the wide-ranging palatability of her music, with some online circles arguing that her style appeals overwhelmingly to white audiences.

Asked by Stern how she feels about that argument, Lizzo said: “[It’s] very hurtful, only because I am a Black woman, and I feel like it really challenges my identity and who I am, and diminishes that, which I think is really hurtful.”

She went on to explain that she categorises her style as “funky, soulful, feel-good music” that bears a lot of the stylistic hallmarks common in “a lot of Black music – that was made for Black people – in the ’70s and ’80s.”

Ultimately, Lizzo declared, her “message” is intended to be consumed and embraced by “literally for everybody and anybody”. She continued: “I don’t try to gatekeep my message from people. So all three of those things for me, I’m just like, ‘You don’t even get me at all.’

“And I feel like a lot of people, truthfully, don’t get me – which is why I wanted to do this documentary, because I was like, ‘I feel like y’all don’t understand me, y’all don’t know where I came from…’ And now I don’t want to answer no more questions about this shit. I want to show the world who I am.”

Lizzo’s interview with Stern follows one she did last month with Entertainment Weekly, where she discussed the racial stigmas and biases she said were “inherent” in pop music.

The topic was broached when journalist Gerrad Hall referenced the same scene that Stern did, asking Lizzo if she considered the root of that backlash to be “a stigma of pop music, because the genre can be so white-feeling that if you have a hit there, then people think you’re catering to a specific demographic”. Lizzo answered in the affirmative, declaring her perspective to be that “[the] genre’s racist inherently”.

She explained further at the time: “I think if people did any research they would see that there was race music and then there was pop music. And 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.”

Love, Lizzo capped off a busy November for the genre-bending pop and soul star, between the release of her Christmas single for Amazon Music and two major announcements: one for a new set of North American tour dates, and one for her headline appearance at next year’s Open’er festival. She’ll also tour the UK next year, with still riding on the high of her fourth album ‘Special’.

In a four-star review of the album – which featured singles like ‘About Damn Time’, ‘Grrrls’ and ‘2 Be Loved (Am I Ready)’ – NME’s Nick Levine wrote: “Lizzo knows exactly who she is as an artist and what she wants to achieve: she’s the bad bitch with an incredible talent for making people feel good.”