Lizzo Calls Out ‘Racist Origin’ of Pop Music and Discusses Segregation of Black Artists

Lizzo has aired her thoughts on the stigma of pop music and how race music has been used to divide Black artists.

The 34-year-old, who dropped her fourth studio album, Special, in July, told Entertainment Weekly of pop music: ‘Genre’s racist inherently.

‘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.’

She elaborated further, likening genres in music to code words, and highlighted that R&B preceded the birth of hip-hop and rap.

Lizzo continued: ‘I think when you think about pop, you think about MTV in the 1980s 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.’

She added that due to pop now being a ‘well-oiled’ genre, it’s important to remember its ‘racist origin’. ‘Rap is running the game,’ she said.

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