Taking You Higher

rapper, singer, and tv host lizzo has got the recipe for self- love, and it starts with just a bit of coconut oil. by eve barlow. photographed by carissa gallo. styled by soki mak

inadvertently spent three months in silence. To overcome her grief, she gave herself a new challenge. “I decided I wanted to be a singer, but I On a bright afternoon last October, a brief bout of pandemonium swept never really sang before,” she says. “I think it came from a place of feel- over Los Angeles International Airport. LL Cool J was boarding a flight ing hopeless, you know? I’d just dropped my life’s work.” At the time, to Austin, and his lady fans were flocking to take selfies with him. In line she only sang alone at night while jogging to Beyoncé’s B’Day album. “I at the gate stood Lizzo, who would be the opening act for the iconic rap- sounded so bad,” she recalls. “Bad” is how she describes much of her per’s performance at Austin City Limits Music Festival the next day and, early twenties: She was poor and played with “bad” rock bands, and at as such, was impervious to the fandom infecting the air. Or so it seemed. her lowest ebb auditioned for American Idol with Beyoncé’s “Listen,” “Oh, I spoke to him on the plane. Ha!” says Lizzo with an explosive sung “badly.” Despite her setbacks and having to prove herself to her laugh, seated outside a coffee shop on Beverly Hills’ Wilshire Boulevard. mother (her father passed away when she was 21), she always believed “But I was like, ‘Damn, LL.’ I thought he’d be flying private.” Noting that he she’d find a way. “I’m just not good at customer service,” she jokes. hosted the Grammys for five years straight, she continues: “So he goes”— Today, Lizzo is a beacon of empowerment. When I tell her I’ve quit she drops her register, adopting her best LL impersonation—“‘I’ll see you caffeine she showers me with encouragement: “Kudos! You’ve given up next year.’” drugs!” Her independently released albums Lizzobangers (2013) and Big Despite passing off the torch to James Corden, LL may have been Grrrl Small World (2015) possess that same enthusiasm, with a thrilling on to something with his prophetic proclamation. Lizzo isn’t Grammy- sound that traverses hip-hop, pop, and soul, while her rambunctious per- nominated yet, but she’s surely got the story of a star. Growing up broke, sona challenges preconceptions about femininity and volume. It’s difficult she lived a nomadic life in Detroit, Houston, and Minneapolis. “I’ve never to pigeonhole Lizzo—although Rolling Stone tried, by including her most moved somewhere like normal people—it was always, ‘Evacuate!’” she recent project, last year’s Coconut Oil EP, in its Best Pop Albums of 2016 recalls. She’s still surprised to find herself living in L.A.: Born Melissa list. “First off, it wasn’t an album,” she says, “Second, it’s not pop. But, Jefferson and raised in a religious household, she didn’t have access to OK, I’ll take it!” music or TV until she was 10. Even now, she feels less assimilated and The title track of the six-song EP nods to Lizzo’s earlier musical more so observant of pop culture. (“I use it like a science,” she says.) endeavors, kicking off with the sound of Sasha Flute—Lizzo’s own instru- An avid fan of both R&B and alt-rock, Lizzo’s favorite song in her youth ment, named after Beyoncé’s alter ego, Sasha Fierce. Whereas Beyoncé’s was Radiohead’s “Subterranean Homesick Alien,” and the track still second self is more extroverted, Sasha Flute is the chill to Lizzo’s fire. resonates with her. “I listened to the lyrics and was like, ‘Thom Yorke, you The flute can’t accompany her on the road, though. “What if somebody feel me!’” she says. “It’s how I feel when I’m explaining my struggle. Now, harms her?” Lizzo says, aghast at the idea. “If I’m this anal about a flute when I think about ‘Trump’s America,’ I wish the aliens would just swoop imagine me having kids. I can’t!” down in a country lane and take me away. Ha!” By seventh grade, Lizzo Coconut Oil is an introspective and less overtly political project com- had a rap crew, The Cornrow Clique, and rhymed under the moniker pared to Lizzo’s first two albums. Lizzobangers is her “angry” record “Lisso.” She’d call in to Houston radio stations and freestyle, but her aspi- (“I was dealing with all the things Black Lives Matters activists deal rations remained more traditional, as she studied classical flute. “I had with, but by myself,” she explains) and Big Grrrl is about love (“love for two lives,” she explains. “I was Lizzo, the rapper, and I was Melissa, the a woman who lost her son in a senseless murder, love for a woman who girl who was going to Paris to be in a wind chamber. I chose the rap life, doesn’t know her stretch marks are beautiful”), but Coconut Oil is about but my flute represents that band geek in me.” self-care—it’s like a face mask for the soul. “Women are born to receive That decision spurred from a gut instinct after she received her clas- signals from the media like little land mines that get planted on us about sical flute degree at the University of Houston, but accepting it didn’t the way we look and sound,” she explains of the project’s inspiration. come easily. Quitting classical music led to a summer overcome with “When you grow up, things set the land mines off and send you down a

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queen that anthony hair: makeup: mari durene. she is.”

things set me off. If I look at a Kardashian for too long, I’m like, Argh‘ , I She explains the song’s meaning: “I don’t want a man to worship me. I gotta go straighten my hair and put some eyebrows on!’” want society to see a big black woman as the queen that she is.” Naturally, themes of self-love in Lizzo’s work stem from her own jour- While Lizzo recognizes the need for anger in art, her growing focus on ney to accept her figure, and having to pander to the media’s focus on her her self-worth has given her career greater value. At the kickoff of her “body positive” messages and the sheer fact of her weight. She spent the Coconut Oil Tour (which coincided with Inauguration Day), she referred Big Grrrl years trying to resolve her relationships with family and friends, to herself as her audience’s “self-help guidance counselor,” and the sold- but in doing so, compromised her focus on her relationship with her- out crowd joined her in raising a fist to honor the Black Lives Matter self. “I said, ‘This is it, I gotta love my body.’” And the more she accepted movement. But in “Trump’s America” she intends to empower people herself, the more she wanted to nurture. “I’ve been killing it: coconut oil, with more than just music. Though part of her reason for moving to L.A. water, movement, sleep,” she says. was to be closer to Ricky Reed, who’s working on her upcoming third Still, incorporating some level of political commentary into her music is album, the new environment has sparked a new aspiration: Since last unavoidable: According to Lizzo, simply being a black woman is inherent- August, she has hosted MTV’s Wonderland, and hopes to have her own ly political. “I have no choice,” she says. “My mere existence is activism. show some day. (“They know I been takin’ notes!” she says.) She’s start- I can sing ‘Worship’ and there’s no lyric that says, ‘I’m a black woman! ed screenwriting as well. While she used to write fantasy fiction, now Feminism and racism exist!’ but people are like, ‘Woo! Political anthem of that she’s living her own fantasy, her inspiration has shifted. “I don’t write the year, girl!’ If Ariana Grande sang it, they would think it’s a love song.” fantasy no more. I write reality,” she says. “I want people to know how my

old noggin works. My ideas ain’t just for me, they’re for other people.” hansen. rings by jen piaf, by mishka earrings sunglasses by retrosuperfuture, jeans by asos bryant, curve, by lane jacket at opus beautynguyen using m.a.c cosmetics. 132