Miley Cyrus thanked Lizzo for her TED Talk about the history of twerking.
The “Truth Hurts” hitmaker gave a TED Talk, which she also called the TED Twerk, in August last year about how the dance’s Black history had been erased by popular culture.
During her talk, Lizzo cited Miley as an example of a white person who brought twerking into the mainstream, after the “Wrecking Ball” star hit headlines for doing the risque move at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards.
Discussing her talk with People, Lizzo revealed that Miley thanked her for the talk when they bumped into each other.
“I’m very delicate with how I mention her (Miley) because, at the end of the day, I didn’t want to have any bias in the way I talked about how she brought twerking to (the) mainstream,” she explained. “The messenger is kind of how this thing spread like it did – seeing her at the VMAs. And I saw her recently and she was like, ‘I watched your TED Talk and I really loved it. Thank you for that.'”
During her talk, Lizzo said,“Everything that Black people create, from fashion to music to the way we talk, is co-opted and appropriated by pop culture. I want to prevent the erasure of Blackness from twerking.”
The 35-year-old told People that she grew up in a family that is “very proud” of their “Blackness” and learned from an early age how America treats Black people, specifically Black women.