Time magazine on Wednesday, December 11, named singer Lizzo as the Entertainer of the Year 2019.
The 31-year-old flute-playing singer and rapper, whose real name is Melissa Viviane Jefferson, catapulted to fame this year with empowering songs like “Truth Hurts” and “Juice”.
She is the most nominated artist for the 2020 Grammy Awards, leading with eight nominations including best album, record and song of the year. She also got nominations for variations of best new artist, song and album at this year’s Teen Choice Awards, MTV Video Music Awards, People’s Choice Awards, BET Hip Hop Awards and American Music Awards.
The singer has been making music for years but wasn’t getting the recognition she deserved. At some point, she was broke and was sleeping in her car, according to her. She recently got her big break and things have been looking up for her since then.
Reacting to being named Time’s entertainer of the year, Lizzo wrote on Instagram: “ARE.. YOU.. NOT.. ENTERTAINED?!? ? thank you @time for naming me Entertainer of the Year. Photograph by Paola Kudacki for TIME.”
In another post, she wrote:
“I’ve been doing positive music for a long-ass 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! How could we have guessed something like this would happen when we’ve never seen anything like this before?” – story for @time by Sam Irby
