Lizzo took a walk down memory lane during a recent appearance on the Angie Martinez Show.
At the 25:30 mark of the interview above, Lizzo recalled the backlash she faced for comparing her rapping prowess to that of Future and Swae Lee in a since-deleted 2019 tweet.
“So, is Lizzo a rapper?” Martinez asked the “About Damn Time” artist. Instead of directly answering the question, which comes amid an ongoing debate on whether Doja Cat is a rapper or not, Lizzo recalled when she got “fucking annihilated” for the tweet.
“Yo, now that question is crazy ‘cause there’s this thing—I got fucking annihilated on the internet, early days, when I was tweeting,” she said. “I was like, yo, there’s a lotta racism in genre, you know what I mean? There’s a lot of rappers that are actually singers, but they call them rappers because of their aesthetic, you know what I’m saying? Like these rappers be singing they heart out, but they got chains and they got the grill.”
As she highlighted, both Future and Swae emphasize melody in their songs, and often perform with a sing-rap delivery. “I think it’s a beautiful thing. So, I was like, yo, ‘I rap and I sing and I do the same, but I am as much of a rapper as Swae Lee or Future,’” she continued. “And I got destroyed! They was like, ‘Shut up! No fat bitches in the club! Ahhhhh!’ I was like, ‘What did I do?!”
The tweet in question saw Lizzo express her frustrations about people doubting whether she can be labeled a rapper. “Sometimes I get pissed that there are people who call future & sway lee [sic] rappers and still question whether or not I belong in the rap conversation...but then I remember I have the #4 song in the country, laugh, go back to my dream job and log off,” she tweeted at the time.
After deleting the tweet, Lizzo clarified that she meant no disrespect to either artists. “I LOVE Future & swae bruhhhhhh… the point went straight over y’alls heads,” she wrote. “I’m just saying we all share a similar rap sing style.”
In her interview with Martinez, Lizzo added that Swae Lee was asked about her comments later down the line, too, and he didn’t appear to take any issue. “Even Swae Lee, they like, interviewed him, I think TMZ,” she said. “He was like, ‘Girl power, like, love to work with her one day.’ And now nobody was tripping, between Swae Lee and Future, but the internet went crazy. I was like, ‘I’m never talking about this again.’”
Lizzo also discussed the current debate surrounding Doja Cat, too, which she isn’t on board with. “I’m like, ‘huh?’” she said of the Doja debate. “Doja Cat is a rapper, but she also sings. It’s just an interesting thing, like, I have a Grammy for Best Traditional R&B song, I have a Grammy for Best Pop Vocal, and for Urban contemporary album,” she said. “In one year, same album. I’m everything. … And genre’s racist, I’m done.”
