Lizzo gets honest about the stigma in the pop industry: 'Genre’s Racist Inherently'

Lizzo recently opened up about the inherent racist trait of the pop industry and how the difference between pop music and race music is used to segregate Black artists.

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Lizzo said, "Genre’s racist inherently. I think if people did any research they would see that there was race music and then there was pop music."

She continued, "And race music was their way of segregating Black artists from being mainstream because they didn’t want their kids listening to music created by Black and brown people because they said it was demonic and yada, yada, yada."

The Emmy-winning artist also explained how music genres are almost used as code words, "I think when you think about pop, you think about MTV in the ’80s talking about ‘We can’t play rap music,’ or ‘We can’t put this person on our platform because we’re thinking about what people in the middle of America think’ and we all know what that’s code for."

As per The Hollywood Reporter, she said that pop is a "well-oiled" machine and that it is important to know that it has a "racist origin."

In the same interview, the 34-year-old artist shared on the backlash she has faced about her music not being "Black enough." She said, "I think anything that’s new, people are going to criticize and feel like it’s not for them."

Adding on, she continued, "But once you get used to something, it might be for you. So for people who don’t like pop music or don’t like Black artists that make pop music, they may eventually like me, You just gotta get used to me because I’m making good shit. You missing out."