Lizzo’s assistant is piling suitcases in the entryway of the musician’s home in Los Angeles when suddenly her boss reassigns her to a more pressing task.
“I need the pickle juice!” Lizzo hollers from the living room, grimacing as she rubs an arm muscle. “It’s really cramping.”
With about a week to go until the release of her new album, this four-time Grammy winner with a pair of No. 1 pop hits is starting to feel the strain of a high-stakes project rollout on a recent afternoon. Yesterday she spent a few hours in retail-politics mode at a Chili’s in Encino as part of her sponsorship deal with the chain restaurant; tonight she’ll fly to Miami to perform at a Sports Illustrated swimsuit event where an unexpected rainstorm will turn the runway into a Slip ’N Slide.
Yet right now you won’t hear Lizzo, 38, complain about her workload. Being tired means you’ve been busy; being busy means you’re in demand. And demand has often seemed in short supply of late for the singer, rapper, flautist and shapewear magnate born Melissa Jefferson.
In 2023, just months after her disco-funk smash “About Damn Time” was named record of the year at the Grammys, Lizzo was sued by three backup dancers who accused her of sexual harassment and said she’d created a hostile work environment — a startling disruption of the smiley body-positive image Lizzo had spent the previous few years cultivating.
Since then, she’s struggled to connect with a mass audience seemingly uninterested in her music; one particularly damning critique, seen widely on social media, is that she’s outlasted her usefulness as a hair-tossing, nail-checking icon of Biden-era self-affirmation.
Lizzo at home in Los Angeles.
(Ian Spanier / For The Times)
But Lizzo is no quitter. Early this year she played a series of well-received gigs at the Blue Note jazz clubs in New York and L.A., where she remade old hits like “Good as Hell” and “Truth Hurts” in a tasty cabaret style; after that she performed for a hometown crowd of about 70,000 at the annual Houston Rodeo. Now her latest LP, titled “Bitch,” is finally out in the world after a couple of false starts.
“The most inspiring thing about Lizzo is the fact that she never stops,” says her friend SZA, with whom she’s collaborated onstage and in the studio. “She never stops, and she never gives up.” SZA calls Lizzo “a master transmuter” and says she makes her think of “The Alchemist” by Brazilian novelist Paulo Coelho.
“She really turns copper into gold,” SZA adds, “taking whatever’s thrown at her and turning it into some kind of amazing, five-star Michelin-worthy meal.”
At least that’s the hope with “Bitch,” whose title track fuses bits of two late-’90s classics by Missy Elliott and Meredith Brooks.
“Maybe someone’s gonna do the fourth ‘Bitch’ in like 15 years,” says Lizzo, wearing leggings and an athleisure zip-up as she sits down on a sofa to talk. “I’ll be very honored.”
You recently went on what you called a follow spree on X, where you told people you’d follow them on the platform if they promoted your album.
I hadn’t been on Twitter in years because Twitter is kind of like the Sunken Place, and I didn’t want to interact with it. But I went on and then got into an accidental spat with a stan. Someone was like, “Why is Lizzo fighting with a stan?” I saw that, and I was like, “Yeah, why am I fighting with stans? Why don’t I love the stans?” It’s the way I used to interact on Twitter, but I didn’t realize that famous people stopped doing that.
The picture of you from the cover of your single “Juice” ended up becoming a meme.
I’ve seen myself mashed up with Kamala Harris. I’ve seen me as a mannequin dummy. I’ve seen Chili’s baby back ribs slathered across my face. It’s insane, and I love it. Really, what it is is that I had been completely dragged in the Kevin Hart roast [on Netflix in May], and I remember being like, I’ve heard everything I could possibly hear about me, so nothing can bother me now.
I tried to parse some of the criticisms you’ve gotten over the last few years. One theme I identified is this idea that Lizzo is always doing too much, and I wondered whether you feel that’s a gendered criticism.
Absolutely. And I think Black women get it even worse. I think that most of the criticisms and dislike for me are fatphobic and racist and sexist. It’s the fact that I’m a fat Black woman and I’m existing outside the parameters in which society thinks I should exist. I’ve always been a little too much — that’s my personality. But I’m like, Am I too much or are you not enough? I’d rather be annoying than invisible.
Getting over the fear of being perceived as annoying — that seems hard. Tell me about that journey.
Well, I grew up feeling very annoying.
Happily?
No, it was a huge insecurity of mine. I’m the baby in the family, and I played probably the most annoying instrument to be bad at. Hearing someone be bad at the flute is a nightmare. And I was bad for at least two years. But I feel like there’s something powerful about being unafraid to be annoying in 2026. I’ve had that anxiety shadow me my whole life, and I think I’m healing something in myself — in my inner child — that I didn’t even realize I’m healing. Some people call it a humiliation kink. But I say I put the “milli” in “humiliation.”
We probably need to talk about Chili’s. You said you were there yesterday.
I bought baby back ribs for everyone in the building, and I had a Triple Dipper and a Popping Boba Marg.
The brand ambassador is brand-ambassador-ing.
Look, I grew up eating at Chili’s. When I went to college, there was a Chili’s Too on campus, and I remember being like, Oh my gosh, I’m homesick — let me go get a molten lava cake and some Southwestern egg rolls. And the baby back ribs jingle? It’s canon.
The commercial where you perform the jingle — I think it might be wacky enough that it goes past cringe and comes back around to funny.
I thought it was camp, and I am very, very camp. I don’t care about being cringe — I think to be cringe is to be free.
Ooh.
I’m a diva — I am — and I feel like divas are a dying breed. A talented, confident, beautiful woman who’s a bit of a flirt — from the Dolly Partons to the Mariah Careys to the Whitney Houstons, that’s where I’m at. And I don’t think any of those women care about being cringe. They’re in on it, and I am too.
OK, this feels crucial: There have been moments in your career where you’ve clearly been in on it. But there have been other moments where I wasn’t so sure.
The general public, nine times out of 10, they think they’re laughing at me. I’m like, “Honey, I’m laughing with you laughing at me all the way to the bank.” That’s why I did a roast! That’s why I can tweet at Azealia Banks and say, “I like it when you call me Fat Lizzo.” That’s why the “Juice” memes don’t offend me. I think people don’t realize how much humor I’m normally coming at the internet with. I’m like, “Y’all know I’m joking, right?” But they don’t.
How to maintain that joking attitude in the face of serious legal troubles?
“You don’t,” Lizzo says. “I don’t think there’s anything funny about that.”
The singer has denied her former dancers’ claims, perhaps the most eyebrow-raising of which — that she shamed them over their weight — was dismissed by a judge last year. And she’s vowed to keep fighting the rest of the case, which is ongoing.
Asked how the experience has shaped her, Lizzo says, “You sit back for a second and learn from the situation, and then you grow and you make sure that moving forward, something like that doesn’t happen again to you.”
How?
“I don’t have the specifics,” she says. “But I would say in general that there are things that come with being a boss and owning a business that an indie kid sometimes only learns the hard way. And I think that was important for me.”
Lizzo and SZA at the 66th Grammy Awards in 2024.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Lizzo, who grew up in Houston, found her musical voice in Minneapolis, where she played in the city’s underground rock and hip-hop scenes. In 2016 she moved to L.A. and signed a deal with Atlantic Records; “Cuz I Love You,” her major-label debut, came out three years later and went platinum on the back of hits like “Juice” and the Hot 100-topping “Truth Hurts.”
Things moved quickly after that — a collab with Cardi B, an Amazon reality show, the shapewear line Yitty — until things started to fall apart. Yet Lizzo says none of the controversy or backlash did anything to diminish her creative energy, which her new album’s high points might lead you to believe.
“Don’t Make Me Love U” is a pitch-perfect riff on the synthed-up pop-soul of late-’80s Tina Turner, while “She Stole My Man” puts ringing Cure-style guitars over a crisp new wave groove. Overall, “Bitch” leans more rock than R&B, a shift Lizzo’s longtime producer, Ricky Reed, attributes in part to an appearance she made with the band Incubus at the Hollywood Bowl in 2023.
“I remember after that she was like, ‘Man, we should do a punk song or something proggy,’” Reed says. “She was in a band like that in high school so we just started very unabashedly looking at her true influences and her true passions.”
Though the LP closes with the buoyant “Goodmorning!” — “You know the way Jesus turned water to wine?” she sings, “Well, I’m-a turn water to Pedialyte” — “Bitch” goes light on the type of uplifting empowerment anthems that made Lizzo a star.
“Please write that in your article,” Lizzo tells me. “I used to write all my songs with silver linings, and I gave myself permission to have no silver linings on this album.” As examples, she points to “Like a Crime,” a mournful acoustic ballad, and the woozy “Too Nice,” both of which describe betrayals of her trust.
“Everybody got real quiet in the room when I showed them ‘Too Nice’ — like, ‘Whoa, Melissa, don’t pull out the 9,’” she says with a laugh.
Reed says that on this album, “Maybe there’s no bumper-sticker lyric, or maybe there’s no T-shirt lyric. Maybe it’s not gonna be relatable to all her fans. But she had to say what’s true for her right now. We had to take care of Lizzo first.”
The sun is setting, and it’s starting to get dark inside Lizzo’s house.
The singer, who’s been in a fairly private relationship for years with comedian Myke Wright, moved in here not long ago and hasn’t quite finished decorating yet. Her Grammys sit on a shelf along with some other awards and a photo of her at “Saturday Night Live.” But the furniture is still spare enough that when she laughs, the sound reverberates off the walls.
Lizzo performs in February at the Blue Note in Los Angeles.
(Christopher Polk / Billboard via Getty Images)
After a decade, does L.A. feel like home?
“It’s wild, because it doesn’t,” she says. “I think people who move to industry cities for industry don’t call it home for some odd reason. It’s like I’ve been at work for 10 years.” She’s grateful to be here, she adds — perfect weather, great food, easy access to folks in show business. But she thinks “all the time” about where else she might live someday.
“I fantasize about living in Texas again,” she says. “I fantasize about Japan a lot, and I fantasize about Paris. I fantasize about Ghana. I fantasize about New Zealand.”
You gave a pretty revealing interview to New York magazine last year where you talked about depression and about wanting to leave your career behind. Do you regret it?
I’ll say this: I did a lot of press last year when I was in a very vulnerable place. I really needed someone to talk to, and I think I was doing that with journalists and podcasters when I should have been doing that with my therapist. It’s fine, but reflecting on that now is so interesting for me, because I’m like, Oh my gosh, baby, you were hurting.
Does it make you sad to think about that moment in your life?
No, I’m so grateful — I learned so much in 2025.
You’ve had a couple songs that did all the big things a song can do. Do you think you’ll have more of those?
I know I don’t need any more of those. Haters try to talk about charts, and I’m like, “Girl, I did that.” So once you’ve done it, now it’s like, what actually makes me happy? What do I really want to do?
The upside of a Grammy or a No. 1 record is clear. What’s the downside?
You gain a lot of secret enemies. I understand every rapper now — I’m like, Tee Grizzley, I get you, bro. People are just mad that you’re successful and mad they’re not a part of it. Even the media — you know, you’re one of ’em — they love a rise but they love a fall. It’s salacious, it’s exciting, it’s sticky. Then everyone stands back like “The Hunger Games” and sees if you can get back up again. And you have to get up on your own. No one’s giving you a hand — not society, not the media, nobody. Then, once you’re up, people might lift you on their shoulders again.
Where are you in that arc?
I believe I’m up.
Is there anything I could have asked you today that you would’ve lied about?
Probably me and my man’s relationship. I wouldn’t have lied — I would’ve just been like [bats eyelashes], “No comment.” If you ask my friends or my family, I’m a really bad liar — like Pinocchio level. So I’ve learned to just be like, what’s the best thing I can say about this that doesn’t answer the question? But I like that trait about me — I like that I can’t lie. Liars kind of scare me.
Seems beneficial for an artist.
I’m too real — to my detriment.