Lizzo has spoken out against the racial stigmas in pop music.
While speaking to Entertainment Weekly, the “About Damn Time” singer explained that genres such as R&B were created to keep Black artists out of the mainstream pop genre.
“Genre’s racist inherently,” Lizzo argued. “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.”
The singer continued, “I think when you think about pop, you think about MTV in the ’80s talking about ‘We can’t play rap music,’ or ‘We can’t put this person on our platform because we’re thinking about what people in the middle of America think’ – and we all know what that’s code for.”
While she described pop as a “well-oiled” machine with a “racist origin,” Lizzo acknowledged that she finds it “so cool” how hip-hop and rap artists have broken into the mainstream.
“Rap is running the game,” she said.
Elsewhere in the interview, she responded to criticism of her pop music, saying, “For people who don’t like pop music or don’t like Black artists that make pop music, they may eventually like me. You just gotta get used to me because I’m making good s###. You missing out.”
