Lizzo spent all of 2019 making sure we know her name. The singer-songwriter-rapper-flutist dropped an album, Cuz I Love You, reinvested in her previous music, and watched the fame and glory come to her. She’s been working (“doing calisthenics!â€) and now she’s being rewarded. Time magazine has named Lizzo 2019’s Entertainer of the Year. Known for her inspirational lyrics and beats that make you wanna move, some of Lizzo’s biggest hits, like 2016’s “Good As Hell,†came out years ago. Why are we just now catching on? “I’ve been doing positive music for a long-ass time,†she said in Time. “Then the culture changed. There were a lot of things that weren’t popular but existed, like body positivity, which at first was a form of protest for fat bodies and black women and has now become a trendy, commercialized thing. Now I’ve seen it reach the mainstream. Suddenly I’m mainstream!â€
How mainstream is she? Lizzo is so mainstream, she leads Grammy nominations with eight nods. So mainstream that she’s a mainstay on the Billboard charts. And so mainstream that she set the internet ablaze with debate over her outfit just this week. Lizzo topped the Billboard Hot 100 with “Truth Hurts,†a two-year-old song, and covered British Vogue, Elle, Essence, Billboard, Allure, and the Cut with enough confidence to boost every fat black girl who sees it. Yes, she’s Time’s Entertainer of the Year, but at this rate she’ll be around, yelling at us to love ourselves, for decades to come.