Lizzo hypes new album, reveals how she deals with stress and more in Apple Music 1 Q&A

Grammy-winning rapper Lizzo has plenty to talk about these days - notably with a new Special studio album on deck and her ‘About Damn Time’ streaming, she pulls through with Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1 to dish on everything from piecing together the new tunes and dealing with stress to the importance of 2022.

There’s ample moments in the entire conversation so as we await the full audio/video, check out key quotes from the chop up session.

Lizzo Tells Apple Music About Her New Single "About Damn Time”, Why It’s The Song of the Summer, and Why It Almost Didn’t Make Her Upcoming Album…

I'm made the song of the summer with "About Damn Time". I'm in my bag, and my bag is music. I'm good at music. It’s what I do.

“About Damn Time” can lead into so many conversations. It's about damn time I feel better, it's about damn time we get out this pandemic. It's about damn time we to get the first black female Supreme Court Justice. There's so many things. It's about damn time we popped the champagne. It's about damn time the tequila got here.

I have to give props to Ricky [Reed] and Blake Slatkin. I was in my diva bag on this one, because I thought I was done with my album, Zane. I was like, "I'm done, no more songs." Then they were like, "Yo, we think we got something," and I was like, "I ain't coming to the studio unless it's a hit.” They played a track, I heard the track, and I was like, "I'll be there in 10 minutes." You know what I'm saying? When I got there, the idea is disco was revolutionary for a lot of people, disco and funk. This was intentionally disco, funk, something to walk to coming out of this dark time. This was intentional, the genre of music.

Lizzo Tells Apple Music What She Hopes Her Fans Get Out of Her New Album ’Special’…

I think that the music really is going to speak for itself. I'm writing songs about love from every direction, and I hope that I can turn a little bit of the fear that's been running rampant in this world, energetically into love. That's the point. I had a lot of fear, and I had to do the work on myself, and this music is some of that work in turning that fear into love. I hope that when people listen to this album, it makes their day just a little bit better, a little bit more filled with love.

Lizzo Tells Apple Music About The Lyrics on “About Damn Time” and Lizzoisms…

I said "it's been a minute, tell me how you're healing. I'm about to get into my feelings. How you feeling?” Yeah, I don't think people realize underneath my songs, there is this challenge, this heartbreak, this problem that I'm solving in the music… that was the result of me sitting in the booth. We call Lizzoisms, and it's like, "How many Lizzoisms can I put in this song?”

Lizzo Tells Apple Music She Wants To Alleviate Collective Stress With Her Music...

I don't want to be stressed anymore. I think stress was the number one emotion in my vocabulary for the last few years. I'm already an anxious, prone person, and so I've been on trying to work on anti-anxiety. Breathing, and de-stressing my life, decluttering my emotions. But I think environmentally… Hello? When you add the stress of the internet on top of that, and this global connection we have? Now we're all stressed on a collective level. I don't want to add to that. How can I help that? How can I support feeling better?

Lizzo Tells Apple Music How “About Damn Time” Differs From Prior Release “Rumors” and Embracing Contrast in The Music She Releases…

I only want to make solutions. I got the vision for the solutions, okay? I made a lot of songs that were not like that. Even calling back to Rumors, Rumors was very selfish. I was like, "Let me get this off my chest, let me talk my shit.” I think Rumors was... It's cool. "Rumors" is just a cool song. It was also very personal. It was very micro, because it was like me, this is my specific issue that I'm talking about that people might not be able to relate to. "About Damn Time" was like, "We need it." I think I really crossed the bridge after. Thank god for "Rumors", because it allowed me as an artist, because I have to get that off. I have to scratch that itch as an artist, or else the songs that help the world won't come through. Lizzo Bangers was very personal, me, me. If I didn't do Lizzo Bangers, I wouldn't be able to do "Because I Love You". You know what I'm saying? Or "Good As Hell”.

Lizzo Tells Apple Music About Titling Her Forthcoming Album ‘Special’ and How It Represents a New Era…

Special is multipurposeful, and can mean so many things. Specifically, I wrote a song on the album. It's called Special, so it's named after... It's the titular song. The album was called 'In Case Nobody Told You' for a while, and then Max Martin came on and he helped me change the hook a little bit and restructured it. He was like, "Special, Special. The song is Special." I was like, "Okay." Then one day, I had this aha moment where I'm like, "Oh shit, the album is Special. Literally, the album is special, and I'm special." You know what I'm saying? I want the person to hear this to feel special. The way that you feel when you say that word is like... In Case Nobody Told You is cool, it has that same kind of dark… Everything now has this special feel to it, and this glow, this sparkle. Ever since that's the era I'm moving into. It's out of the darkness and into the light. I feel like the album is an incredible body of music, which was super important to me. I wanted to create good fucking music that actually was cohesive, and meaningful, and rich and lush, and I think people is... It could be a grower, it could be a shower. I don't care, it's good. Once people discover it, it's going to make them feel good and them know what's up.

Lizzo Tells Apple Music About The Album Art for ’Special’…

It's literally a suit of armor, and I think that's why even the album cover is so special. Because it is. I can't stop saying the word special now, but it's the suit of armor. It protects you, and it's a beautiful thing too. I have one of the most incredible creative teams, from styling, hair and makeup. We worked with these amazing photographers, it's the ABDM. Incredible photographers. I think they did my Variety shoot, and I was like, "I like y'all.” We got deep in our bag, and we were like, "We got to do iconic shit." Just clean, iconic, beautiful imagery is the most important thing in that photo. That wasn't even really what we thought the album cover shot was going to be, and then it just... When it was happening, people were like, "Whoa." Because I had my album playing, I had the album playing while we were shooting, and it was just this moment that synced up.

Lizzo Tells Apple Music Why 2022 is The Year of Her Dreams and Why The Future is Limitless For Her…

I want to focus on the girls, because that's what it's about, the dancers. Now we get to tour the world together. Yitty that's out, and I feel like the next 12 months, I don't even know what the limit is. Because these dreams that I've done this year, this year, it's 2022, I've been working towards for the last five years. This is the year of all my dreams, my biggest dreams actually coming to fruition. Now it's like, "I got to dream bigger." It's like when I think about conquering my biggest dreams already, the next 12 months are limitless. Bro, I'm not the cool one, I'm not the trendy one. I don't have a fear of losing relevancy. Just because at the end of the day, what is driving me is the quality of my music.