By Sayeda Ghazanfar
Girls, snap your fingers in a z-formation, our new it-girl is every bit as soulful, sassy and sensational as you need her to be.
Lizzo’s new album dropped last month and she’s already on everyone’s radar and if she’s not on yours, she needs to be. “Cuz I Love You” is an album for females of every shape, size and color.
Lizzo is one of many artists in our generation that is moving toward a genre-less sound. Instead, her music seems less like a statement and more like a movement.
She’s been playing the flute since junior high and thought she would primarily be a rapper. Though with this album, we see that she is much more than that.
The title track hits hard from the very beginning.
“I thought that I didn’t care/I thought I was love-impaired/But baby, baby/I don’t know what I’m gonna do/I’m crying ‘cause I love you.”
Her strength and conviction come through in the way she belts those lyrics, like a release for herself and for her audience.
Fresh out of a therapy session after “Cuz I Love You,” the album changes course with “Soulmate.” It is, without a doubt, the single girl anthem of the year. It’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” with an edge.
In “Soulmate,” Lizzo is in a relationship with herself.
“She never tells me to exercise/We always get extra fries/And you know the sex is fire/And I gotta testify/I get flowers every Sunday/Imma marry me one day.”
You can’t help but think that there was a man involved to lead her to this new self-appreciation in “Soulmate.” It’s no surprise that she makes a better lover than “Jerome.” This gut-wrenching track has you singing along like you are Aretha Franklin, who is, in fact, a big influence for Lizzo. They even share the same record label.
She sings, “Poor little baby/Who told you that you stood a chance with this royalty?/You’re so sweet/Bless your heart.” “Jerome” is the winner on the album and solidifies that she is more than just a rapper, she is a singer, too. An incredibly talented one.
Lizzo keeps the girl power momentum moving with “Tempo.” She enlists the help of another one of her idols, Missy Elliott for her feature rap song on the album. And they both deliver.
Lizzo sings, “Slow songs/they for skinny h—/Can’t move all of this here to one of those/I’m a thick b—-/I need tempo.”
In an interview with Essence magazine, Lizzo said that while everyone can enjoy her music, her songs are mostly dedicated to big black girls.
“It’s so exciting to me to finally be at a level where I have exposure to my black sisters, my big sisters, my black trans sisters,” she said.
With her powerful music, Lizzo has propelled a population of women who are fed up with unrealistic beauty standards, shaming other women and being too accommodating to men.
Empowerment, of yourself and of other women, is a critical right of passage for females all over the world. As is the feeling of falling in love for the first time, mourning a relationship with a less than deserving man and looking at yourself in the mirror, finally realizing “Damn, she the one.”
