Lizzo Doesn’t Care What You Think About Her Body

Four hours before showtime at MoMA PS1 Warm Up, Lizzo was stressing about whether anyone in the crowd would know the lyrics to her songs. “I have to fake it until I make it,” the artist said backstage. “You just have to gas yourself up. It takes a lot of work.”

Lizzo, born Melissa Jefferson, has made that kind of self-aggrandizement the mission of her work. Her musical catalog celebrates diversity in all forms: body (in “Fitness”), sexuality (“Boys”), race (“My Skin”) and more. And a lesson in confidence in “Truth Hurts.”

“I made a commitment to feel-good music,” she said. “I had to show my belly a lot of attention, a lot of love.”

In April Lizzo was on tour with Haim, the three-sister rock band from Los Angeles, for a month, and most recently she toured with Florence and the Machine. Now that the tour is over, she will focus on completing her still unnamed debut album, expected in early 2019.

Lizzo started rapping as a teenager in Southwest Alief, Tex., which she calls “the SWAT.” At 14, she formed a group called “Cornrow Clique” with her best friends.

“We all wore different color cornrows, and we all had our own verses because we were inspired by Crime Mob,” she said.

Lizzo realized she wanted to pursue music when “the meanest girl in our crew that always made fun of me said I had the best verse.” By the time she was 20, she had joined several rap and R&B groups but was living in a “disgusting” rehearsal studio. Nothing seemed to take off. Then a friend asked her to join his band in Minnesota. He told her she could stay at his parent’s house.

“Within the first year I grew exponentially,” Lizzo said. “I learned how to clean up my voice and refined myself,” she said. In 2013, she released an album called “Lizzobangers” with the independent music label Totally Gross National Product.

Soon, Lizzo found herself living between Minnesota and Los Angeles. In 2016 she relocated to Los Angeles full-time.

She connected with Ricky Reed, a producer who worked with Kesha, Pitbull and Fifth Harmony. Mr. Reed produced Lizzo’s “Coconut Oil EP,” released in late 2016. Though she’d written songs before, it felt like the first time she felt that the lyrics reflected her alone.

“I was in the writers room, and it was like I never knew what writing was,” Lizzo said.

Mr. Reed was impressed and signed her to Atlantic Records that year. Around that same time, she started hosting Wonderland, MTV’s first live music show in 20 years.

The glow-up has been overwhelming, and Lizzo tries to be reflective about it. Before taking the stage at PS1, she considered her days as a middle schooler living in a town of close to 20,000 people. Back then, she would Saran Wrap her torso and her feet to make them look smaller. What would she tell that past self now, if she had the opportunity?

“I would tell her, ‘You know what girl? I’m going to let you finish because everything you’re doing right now is going to create the person I am today,’” she said. “‘I don’t want you to change who you are, because I think the struggle is what makes me special.’”

It’s a feeling she hopes comes through in her music, which is as much about building yourself up as it is about accepting where you are.

“I had to really look myself in the mirror and say, this is it,” she said. “This is the person I am going to be for the rest of my life and it is not going to change,” Lizzo said. “I think when you face yourself it is really hard, because you’re immediately facing the things you don’t like.”

As she dressed for the show backstage, she considered wearing pants but decided to go for a bodysuit instead — bright, regal, tulle on the shoulders. She looked queenly from every angle.

Lizzo’s makeup artist drew a pink line in the beds of her eyelids while her hairdresser stacked scrunchies at the base of her pony and teased its tail. She showed off the Gucci boots she bought on Rodeo Drive.

“Self-care,” she said.

Almost an hour and a half later her road manager told her it was showtime. Her D.J. started playing the first song of her set, “Fitness,” to pump her up backstage. She calmly walked through the corridor, up a flight of stairs, and out a set of doors to the rear of the stage. Her dancers went on first.

“Hi,” she said to the crowd as she stepped out to the center of the stage. The roar of over 1000 people greeted her back. “So happy to close out the summer with y’all.”

PS1 swelled with visitors who had not been deterred by the oppressive heat. There were even residents across the street standing on their balconies hoping to catch her performance. Stage security shooed audience members in the front row who were getting too close to the stage. Lizzo seemed to relax as she started her set. The audience sang along with every word.

“All the big fights, long nights that you been through, I got a bottle of tequila I been saving for you,” she sang from her song “Good as Hell.” She went around anointing the front row by passing around a bottle of Patrón tequila around. Once she got the bottle back she poured the liquor in some audience members mouths herself. It was a Saturday, but she took the crowd to Sunday service.

Then, her D.J. played a church track. Lizzo grabbed the clear bottle of Patrón back, lifted it up above her sky-high ponytail, planted her feet on the concrete and belted out the rest of her hit single. It was pure gospel.