The Grammy-winning superstar Lizzo shared the throwback track on TikTok earlier this week, titling it “Rap songs my label won’t let me release.” Far from curiosity or celebration, the post was greeted with a tsunami of snark and unsolicited feedback.
The comments were as bold as they were brutal. “Rap is in the room with us?” one follower sneered. Another wrote, “I love this but I can see why they won’t let you put it out. I’m against the release. Still love you @lizzo.” Ouch.
But Lizzo wasn’t going to let online vitriol roll off her back. In a raw follow-up video, she gave the haters the business Lizzo-style: raw, emotional, and unapologetic.
“I’m just about to cuss y’all out,” she began, her voice steady but fiery. “Y’all need to check y’all m############ selves. Y’all are so f###### disrespectful to people… Y’all are just f###### mean!” Then there was the closing gut punch: “God doesn’t like ugly.”
The song in question, Lizzo said, was a glimpse into the raw style of her early songwriting. “Now I’ve shared a song I wrote in 2019 when I was a f###### baby songwriter,” she said. “Somebody was like, ‘It’s giving angsty teen. Maybe it’s good you didn’t put this out.’ Who the f### are you? Have you ever written a song before? Ever? And will you ever write anything that good? No.”
She wasn’t rattled by the blowback, at least not visibly. In another, she was resolute, projecting both strength and clarity. “I’m so f###### happy to know who the f### I am. Ain’t nothing y’all gonna do to me to shake me.”
But for longtime fans, this moment registers a little deeper. Lizzo admitted she was nearly ready to walk away from music a little more than a year ago. In March 2024, in a post in which she spoke of the emotional cost of online harassment, she wrote, “I’m getting tired of being caught shit for everything I do, and others don’t get nothing.” “I am sick of being scrutinized on everything I used to do 5 years ago,” she added in the post, “I just want people to see me as a human being.” She said, “I’m always gonna have a past and always gonna have to answer to it, but at least I’m not gonna die a drug addict and unhappy, and beating myself up at my mistakes. I’m a good person and I deserve a good life!” “I’m just distraught… I quit,” she wrote.
Lizzo’s response is no simple clapback but a reminder that artists are people, vulnerable and evolving. Lizzo’s also still just showing up as herself, blemishes and fire and all. But maybe the point is not because it’s good for her, not because it’s something she should do, but because it’s hers.
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