The 23 Best Lizzo Quotes

Chances are, you’ve heard of Lizzo.

That actually seems like an understatement. During the pandemic, and even prior, Lizzo rose to fame with new music and rediscovered music that seemed to be everywhere.

You couldn’t walk into a bar, turn on the radio or sit down at a restaurant without hearing that signature piano line and Lizzo singing, “I just took a DNA test…”

Since then, the 34-year-old Detroit-born Lizzo has branched out, starting clothing lines, TV shows, and more, bringing her light and talent to the world while also trying to empower people who aren’t in the mold of the traditionally glamorous fashion cover star.

In accordance with that effort, we wanted to look at what Lizzo has to say about life, love, her craft, and the world at large.

Here, we will dive into the 23 best Lizzo quotes.

1. “I work on myself daily to be a better person. When I react in a negative way to somebody, I sit back and think about why I did it, so I’m always working on myself, and my music is the same.”

2. “I don’t look to celebrities for style anymore because I’ve learned the chain of command. They are being dressed by a stylist who’s getting inspiration from a 16-year-old kid running the streets of Melbourne, Australia. Once I learned that chain of command, I just started taking it to the streets.”

3. “There’s a lot of influences that I have from Detroit that are subliminal. I mean, I spent the first 10 years of my life there. My mom and dad were born and raised there, so a lot of that rubbed off on me. When I get angry, sometimes a Detroit accent comes out.”

4. “If you are confident in yourself and however you want yourself to be presented, and you’re doing well and doing it because you want to do it and not because someone is pressuring you, then more power to you.”

5. “My formative years were in Houston. I was in middle school, and everyone was dropping the last half of their names and adding an ‘o’ to the end. My little crew that I had, we were an all-female rap group, and everyone had an ‘o’ at the end of their name. I was Lisso. Then this dude started getting lazy with it, saying Lizzo.”

6. “When I was 19, I joined a rock band, and that’s when I began to say, ‘Okay, this is something that I could take seriously.’ When I came to Minneapolis, it just refined everything.”

7. “Everyone looks to an artist for something more than just the music, and that message of being comfortable in my own skin is number one for me.”

8. “Minneapolis just embraced me. There are a lot of weirdos here. It’s awesome because I’m a weirdo. Thankfully, the city embraced me with open arms. A lot about Minneapolis helped carve my musicality and open my eyes. The whole town is so open-minded compared to like, you know, Texas.”

9. “When I was born, my father named me Melissa, and I am still Melissa, but I got the nickname Lizzo around the time I was in the Cornrow Clique.”

10. “The fight still isn’t people of color versus white. It’s the people versus the system built to keep us down. That’s the first line of the Constitution. And the system is manmade but is made of no man. Everyone, regardless of class, creed, culture, and ethnicity can fight the system and help to break it down.”

11. “Seeing people catch a feeling in their spirit and sprint the aisles of the church while my cousins played driving, uplifting gospel stuck with me. I let that same feeling wash over me when I experience and perform music.”

12. “When I first saw Destiny’s Child, I was in the fifth grade, and it made me want to sing and make music, and there would be these freestyles on the radio for what seemed like hours; it was just so cool to me.”

13. “I enjoy female rappers, not because they’re female but because I can connect to them more.”

14. “I knew a lot of girls who just wanted to be famous, and if that’s your goal, that’s awesome; that just wasn’t enough for me.”

15. “I was raised on gospel. I remember hip-hop and rock music were secular, so basically, for my first ten years living in Detroit, I was on gospel. But when I moved to Houston, that’s when I got to open up my musical horizons.”

16. “I’m not a girl who started getting into music and using my femininity to get attention. When I was getting into it, it was all pure skill.”

17. “My mother and father taught me about black excellence and dynasty. They experienced racism personally, and when something like that happens to you and not around you, you develop a different perception than someone who has never experienced racism a day in their lives.”

18. “Every time I rap about being a big girl in a small world, it’s doing a couple things: it’s empowering my self-awareness, my body image, and it’s also making the statement that we are all bigger than this; we’re a part of something bigger than this, and we should live in each moment knowing that.”

19. “I’m glad I’m a woman; I’m glad I’m a rapper because I get to speak to these people who did not get spoken for in this genre.

20. “I spent a lot of time star-gazing, writing, and learning languages when the other kids were doing cooler things in Detroit.”

21. “I like that I’m not typical. I like that I’m called ‘no-genre hip-hop.’”

22. “I feel like I’ve started to create my own culture of being a voice for something, and that’s what people want to know about. I love that because I am a woman and because I a rap, and I look the way I look, I can connect with the demographic of people who feel like they have a voice in me.”

23. “No one said, ‘This is the best female rapper.’ It’s more like, ‘Lizzo can really rap.’ I think its because I’m not that sexy girl. I’m that beast girl.”

Photo: Atlantic Records