Lizzo was named Time’s Entertainer of the Year for 2019 on Wednesday.
The 31-year-old singer has been taking over the music charts and her hit line from Truth Hurts, “I just took a DNA test/ Turns out I’m 100 per cent that b–ch,” has been turned into memes and sung in movies like Netflix’s Someone Great.
The Scuse Me singer has been all over social media for her messages of body positivity and self-empowerment, debuting the world’s tiniest bag at the 2019 American Music Awards and much more.
“I’ve been doing positive music for a long-ass time,” Lizzo told Time. “Then the culture changed. There were a lot of things that weren’t popular but existed, like body positivity, which at first was a form of protest for fat bodies and Black women and has now become a trendy, commercialized thing. Now I’ve seen it reach the mainstream. Suddenly I’m mainstream!”
Lizzo told the outlet that 2019 hasn’t been easy for her and she’s been working on things in therapy.
“From March to … now!” Lizzo laughed. “I was experiencing a little bit of unhappiness. I was not happy with the way I felt to my body. I didn’t feel sexy, and I didn’t know when it was going to end.
“There were times when I would go onstage and be like, ‘Y’all, I’m not going to lie. I’m not feeling myself.’ Sometimes I’d break down and cry. Sometimes the audience would just cheer to make me feel better. I was getting sick a lot. I was like, What the f–k is going on? I need to fall back in love with my body.”
Lizzo said she “didn’t want to be famous.”
“I wanted to be like Brandon Boyd from Incubus! I just want to go to the farmers’ market,” she added.
“ARE… YOU… NOT… ENTERTAINED?!? thank you @Time,” Lizzo tweeted on Wednesday.
It’s been a big year for Lizzo, who was named the breakthrough artist of the year for the first-ever Apple Music Awards and performed at multiple music festivals — including the Glastonbury Festival and as a headliner at the Indianapolis and Sacramento Pride festivals — and awards shows.
Lizzo, who continues to top the music charts with her hits, won two Soul Train Music Awards this year for video of the year for her song Juice and Album/Mixtape of the Year for Cuz I Love You.
She was nominated for multiple awards, including Teen Choice Awards, MTV Video Music Awards, People’s Choice Awards and BET Hip Hop Awards, and has eight nominations for the upcoming Grammy Awards.
News of the Tempo singer being named Time’s Entertainer of the Year comes after she responded to critics blasting her for showing her thong-covered backside at a basketball game.
Lizzo twerked at Sunday’s Lakers-Timberwolves game when the cheerleaders danced to her song Juice.
Lizzo took to Instagram on Dec. 9 to say that she knows she’s shocking because people rarely see a body like hers doing the things she does.
“Nothing really breaks my joy,” the Jerome singer said. “I’m a really solid, grounded person, and I know that I’m shocking because you’ve never seen in a long time a body like mine doing whatever it wants to do and dressing the way that it dresses and moving the way that it moves.
“But I don’t ever want to censor myself because I’m suddenly famous, and I don’t want to censor myself because everyone’s looking at me now. I’m not going to quiet myself,” she said. “I’m not going to shrink myself because somebody thinks that I’m not sexy to them.
“I’m blessed and I want you to know you’re blessed. I want you to know you woke up this morning and that’s a blessing,” Lizzo said, looking into the camera.
“Never ever let somebody stop you or shame you from being yourself,” she told fans in her Instagram livestream. “This is who I’ve always been. Now everyone’s looking at it, and your criticism can just remain your criticism. Your criticism has no effect on me.”
Lizzo will make her Saturday Night Live debut and perform as a musical guest on Dec. 21 with Eddie Murphy as host.
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