There have been many times throughout my years of writing for Weekly Music Commentary, that I thought a featured artist was a perfect fit for the blog. This week I added another in a long list of truly special musicians. Music industry executives and others have created many categories all meant to help businesses attempting to sell music. The average music fan could care less for the most part about what genre of music an artist creates. They either like it, or they don’t. Our featured artist this week caught my attention because of one of those “categories”: alternative hip-hop.
Before I go any further, I will introduce this weeks’ featured artist, Lizzo. The thirty year old artist was born April 27, 1988 in Detroit, MI. She grew up in Houston and Minnesota, all very influential and interesting musical breeding grounds. Working under the titles rapper/singer, Wikipedia officially places her in the alternative hip-hop category. As I dug a little deeper I found that a great number of artists are listed under the same category. Childish Gambino, Arrested Development and many others are listed as alternative hip-hop artists. Is she different from today’s other hip-hop artists? Yes. However, every artist is unique in their own way. That’s why I love featuring artists each week. No two are the same.
The young performer born Melissa Viviane Jefferson has her own story to tell of how she arrived on the musical big stage. Like so many growing up with little more than a dream, the young artist paved her way and became an artist on the brink of very big things.
In an interview with Teen Vogue, Lizzo described herself as a “chubby girl with funny teeth,” going through her morning ritual in her bedroom. “With Panic! At the Disco blasting on the speakers, Melissa would begin her perfectly executed choreography, complete with pirouettes, twirling, and jumping on the bed. Nobody in her household protested when they heard the loud music or the inevitable thumping on the floorboards. They must have known any efforts to stop the concert would have been in vain — Melissa was born for this sort of thing.” In a scene much like every kid early in life, it’s difficult to believe that those moments were the precursor for what would be a budding musical career. It was.
In Minneapolis, she performed with indie groups including the electro soul-pop duo, Lizzo & the Larva Ink. During this time she helped form three-piece all female rap/R&B group, The Chalice. In 2012, The Chalice released their first album, We Are The Chalice, which was locally successful. On October 15, 2013 Lizzo released her début solo album titled Lizzobangers. The album made much noise in the music industry on the national level. Dylan Kilby of MusicOMH gave the album 4 stars out of 5, describing it as “a triumphant album by an extraordinary artist and woman, whose girl-empowering lyricism and social consciousness puts her at the top of the underground and alternative hip-hop community.” Tom Fenwick of Drowned in Sound said, “much of the album’s success has to be shared with producers Lazerbeak and Ryan Olsen who’ve managed to craft a selection of music that sit seamlessly alongside Lizzo’s hyperactivity.”
Lizzo toured the US and UK in the fall of 2013 opening for Har Mar Superstar and additionally sang with his band. Then, in November of the same year, Time Magazine named her one of 14 music artists to watch in 2014.
As a music blogger I am always intrigued by lists that name artists on the rise. There are usually a variety of reasons, but just as interesting are the other artists mentioned and how far they may rise. On the same list was now superstar Chance The Rapper. There were of course twelve other artists mentioned, but they have either yet to rise upon the musical scene or just did not pan out. As with anything else, sometimes time will tell us more about the others. What did the article mention about Lizzo? Here it is:
Minneapolis rapper/singer Lizzo’s just-released début album, LIZZOBANGERS, is packed with impossible rhymes and serious hooks — all played out in a 40-minute frenzy. The inventive, quirky rapper — who has a slew of guest appearances under her belt — learned her chops in church and with the Twin Cities hip-hop collective The Chalice. The album features beats crafted by Doomtree Collective’s Lazerbeak — all under the watchful eye of Ryan Olson, who has worked with indie outfits like Gayngs and Poliça. An inventive and outside-the-box emcee, Lizzo is signed, fittingly, to Totally Gross National Product, a label whose roster is curated by Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon.
Since the publication of that Time article, a lot has happened to boost the young career of Lizzo. During the fall of 2014 Lizzo actually made an appearance on Late Show With David Letterman. She released a second album Big Grrrl Small World, and her first major-label EP, Coconut Oil, was released on October 7, 2016. Things started to come together nicely while working on Coconut Oil. Introduced to GRAMMY® Award-nominated super producer and Nice Life Recording Company founder Ricky Reed [Meghan Trainor, Twenty One Pilots] in 2015, Lizzo found a creative kindred spirit. During their first session, they cut what would become Coconut Oil’s “Worship.”
“Ricky taught me that ‘Less is more’,” she says. “This new minimalism in my music allows me to really evolve. We hit it off right away. I was so excited to share what he and I had been working on. It was a huge leap from writing in a cabin and working with only one producer to being in L.A. and writing with this amazing team. It’s like there were two versions of Lizzo. I was going in a new direction. It was may more soulful. There was more singing. My roots were coming out. Ricky and I didn’t want to wait any longer, so we decided to put out Coconut Oil.”
I must admit, Lizzo is growing on me more and more as I listen to her music. Coconut Oil has made its way into my personal music library, which is the ultimate praise I can heap upon any music. Now I find myself waiting in 2018 for the next huge leap to come in Lizzo’s career. When you listen to Coconut Oil, maybe it would be good to reflect on what Lizzo would like for you to hear and feel from her music and lyrics.
“‘Coconut Oil’ means the most to me,” she continues. “Being a black woman, I wanted to make music for a few reasons. The first is the visibility of being a woman who looks like me in the mainstream pop space. There aren’t enough of what I like to call ‘the others.’ Secondly, I wanted to speak to everyone who looked like me, felt like me, and went through the same things I did. Musically, it encompasses my entire journey. It has flute, I’m rapping, and there’s weird electro-pop guitar reminiscent of my rock ‘n’ roll days. I knew this was something that could connect to black and brown girls and boys. It perfectly represented the entire EP.”