What do an Ancient Celtic Chant, a murderous Italian composer, and a millionaire Pharmacist all have in common?
Lizzo.
Welcome to The Influencers. I’m Lisa Robbin Young. I LOVE music and I love knowing the stories behind the artists that shape our lives. And now I get to share those stories with you! With the help of music historians, educators, journalists, and fans, we’ll trace back hundreds of years to find the earliest influences that helped make American rapper, singer, and Flautist, Lizzo, who she is today.
Some will be obvious.
But who else will we find along the way?
Hop into the musical wayback machine with me as we create a mixtape for the ages. Together, we’ll climb Lizzo’s musical family tree and find out…
Who Influences The Influencers?
One of the things I most appreciate about Lizzo isn’t her musicality, it’s her demonstrated concern for inclusion, self-acceptance, and body positivity. In 2014, Lizzo participated in the ongoing What's Underneath project, from StyleLikeU - a media company focused on self-acceptance. In the project, guests sit on a stool and talk about their relationship to their body as they remove their clothing… until there’s nothing left. Not sure I’d have the courage to do something like that myself!
Her experience in the project inspired the song "My Skin", from her second studio album - Big Grrrl Small World. That 2015 album was her second release… Lizzo released it on her own label. Not something you see many people doing that early in their career, but that bet paid off. Lizzo signed to American producer Ricky Reed’s Nice Life Recording Company and a deal with Atlantic records to produce her first major label EP, Coconut Oil.
Together, Reed and Lizzo penned what would become the first single from Coconut Oil…. “Good As Hell” was originally recorded and released as part of the soundtrack to the Ice Cube comedy, Barbershop 3: The Next Cut. The first music video for the song was tied much more closely to that theme, but the re-release of the song elicited a new video, starring the marching band of the HBCU Southern University, with Lizzo donning a marching band uniform and taking the field with piccolo in hand.
(2:34) Lizzo Good As Hell
Good as Hell didn’t chart or get much traction after the release of Coconut Oil in 2016, but it became a sleeper hit, riding on the coat tails of another sleeper hit, Truth Hurts, in 2019. That song gained in popularity thanks to being featured in the Netflix film, "Someone Great", and a surge in popularity of the track on the social media app TikTok.
Both tunes ended up being re-released as singles in 2019 and were ultimately added as bonus tracks on Lizzo’s third album, Cuz I Love You… Lizzo’s first full-length album with major label Atlantic records. Billboard magazine counts Good As Hell as one of the 10 best Lizzo tracks because of it’s catchy tune and uplifting lyrics. Since then, Reed and Lizzo have collaborated on several albums, winning grammys for Cause I love you and About Damn Time, which we’ll hear more about in just a bit.
I’m Lisa Robbin Young and this is The Influencers - where we connect the dots of popular artists of our time to artists of the past hidden in their musical family tree. As you’ll hear me say in every episode of The Influencers, there’s no way we can talk about every musical influence in the time we have. Visit WFIU.org/TheInfluencers if you want to see ALL my receipts: Lizzo’s tree, research links, and my full-length interviews. I go where my research takes me to find the stories and connections that you might NOT know even if you’re a super fan. The stories that make this tree come to life and give us a bigger view of what happened in the past that made today possible. But maybe you know something I couldn’t find! Share it with us on our website and it might end up in a future episode!
Today, we’re going to look at three aspects in turn: Lizzo the rapper – since that’s where her professional career began – Lizzo the singer, and Lizzo the flutist or flautist if you want to start a war. I’ll share THAT story with you later in the episode. For now, let’s begin with Lizzo’s rap influences.
(3:10) Lizzo About Damn Time
That’s Lizzo’s “About Damn Time” and if you're listening closely, you can hear that the piano part was built on the 1984 rap tune, “Hey DJ” by The World’s Famous Supreme Team. It’s a little slower in the original, so I’m going to speed it up a bit. Can you hear it?
(:12) clip of “Hey DJ” at 1.25x speed
This hip hop duo rose to fame with a little help from punk icon Malcolm McLaren – The same guy who inspired Eminem’s Slim Shady to sing “two trailer park girls go round the outside, round the outside, round the outside” in his song “Without Me”
In a 2015 interview for NME.com, Lizzo talked about two of her earliest influences: skipping school to see Destiny’s child at a local mall, which we’ll talk about later, and how Crime Mob, specifically the rap solo by 17-year old Diamond changed everything for her.
(audio from interview :38-1:04)
“I know I was especially influenced from Crime Mob. And they had this song called ‘Knuck if you buck”’ and, Diamond came in like:
CRIME MOB – Knuck if you buck
“I come in the club, shakin’ my dreads, throwin these bows
And bustin’ these heads.”
(continuing) “…and I remember that being such a big deal to me, because there was Missy [Elliot] and there was all these people, but this girl was just coming in double-time rap hard on a track with all these other guys, …and I just remember going, ‘I wanna rap like that.’”
Crime Mob, was big on the southern Hip Hop Scene in the mid 2000’s, but had disbanded by 2007. Diamond, the youngest member of the group continues to work as a solo artist in the field, collaborating with Ludacris and Waka Flaka, among others.
One of Diamond’s biggest influences? Queen Latifah – who is also one of Lizzo’s first-line influences. Latifah is a multi-hyphenate artist, with film and television credits on TOP of all her awards as a rap artist. Her early single, Ladies First, featuring then-newcomer, Monie Love, became an anthem for a new wave of female rappers, including Diamond.
"Queen Latifah came along and she was part of the Native Tongues group."
That’s Dr. Kyle Adams, a music professor at Indiana University. He’s spent decades researching hip-hop history. I sat down with him to learn more and explore Lizzo’s family tree.
"...it was this collective of hip hop artists from New York, and they did, they dedicated themselves to kind of positivity. Afrocentric hip hop. People who were interested in African history and, and kind of like an uplifting their communities. and so Queen Latifah was a part of that. And so her song ladies first, is all about, you know, powerful women throughout African history."
(3:40) Fade up Song - Queen Latifah – Ladies First (w/ Monie Love)
Ladies First credits several songwriters, including Mark “The 45 King” James, who created samples for several artists like Jay Z’s “Hard Knocks Life (Ghetto Anthem)” and Eminem’s “Stan” – another Eminem connection. What surprised me though was Queen Latifah’s unexpected connection to another artist, Billy Joel. I had to do a double-take when I saw it. “Ladies First” also credits Shane “The Doctor” Faber. He helped engineer many tunes during the golden age of hip hop and cites Billy Joel as one of his musical influences.
"...look at Billy Joel, New York State of Mind. That's got classic jazz changes in it. You know, when you say jazz, it's a loaded word, like hip hop used to be. Jazz has a reputation of being very sophisticated and most regular folks aren't really drawn to bebop or anything close to that."
You can watch more of my interview with Shane and hear more about the golden age of hip hop on our website.
For Lizzo, Representation matters: size, shape, sexuality. Lizzo points to bounce music, specifically New Orleans bounce and the Queen of Bounce, Big Freedia as a key influence and musical inspiration.
Born Freddie Ross, Jr. in New Orleans, Big Freedia sees himself as nonbinary, saying “If I had known the “queen” in Queen Diva would cause so much confusion, I might have called myself the King. Whatever makes my fans comfortable -to be able to call me ‘he ‘ or ‘she’ I’ll allow.”
Here’s The Queen of Bounce, featuring Lizzo on the song Karaoke
(Clip fade up) Song - Big Freedia – Karaoke (Ft. Lizzo) CLEAN VERSION
Big Freedia, points to several of the same influences as Lizzo – like Prince, but Big Freedia and Prince both point to 70‘s disco star, Sylvester, as an early artist of influence for both music and style.
CLIP Under (: 26 VO) Sylvester - You make me feel (Mighty Real)
As an openly gay man who was dubbed the Queen of Disco, Sylvester’s high falsetto and androgynous style paved the way for people like Prince, Big Freedia, and the queer artists and culture of today – an era where trans culture is both co-opted and erased in most of mainstream pop music. But it’s Sylvester’s early work that’s of note here - inspired by the jazz singers of the early 20th century, namely Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald.
Here is Sylvester, from his posthumous album of Private recordings, with Stormy Weather.
(1:59) Song – Sylvester – Stormy Weather
Written in 1933 by Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler, the original handwritten lyrics to Stormy Weather were once featured on an episode of Antiques Roadshow.
We’ll take a look at another branch of Lizzo’s tree in just a minute. I’m Lisa Robbin Young and you’re listening to The Influencers.
You’re listening to The Influencers: a show that traces the musical lineage of today’s popular music. I’m Lisa Robbin Young.
We’ve been looking at Lizzo’s musical influences on the Rap side of things. Now it’s time to shift gears and look at Lizzo the singer. Earlier I mentioned an interview where Lizzo confessed to skipping school to hear Destiny’s Child.
V.O. Lizzo clip from interview (:25 [1:38-2:03])
“When I was in the 5th grade, I skipped school to see Destiny’s Child perform. I remember they sang this thing that they always used to do called The Gospel Medley. And I remember it gave me goosebumps, and little me, little 12 year old me I was just like, “I can’t believe that people can make people feel a certain way,” like... You know what I mean? I wanted to make people feel what they made me feel. And that was one of the moments, I was like, ‘let’s go! I wanna make music.’”
The Gospel Medley is made up of several songs, but there are two clips of the song I want to call out:
Here’s the first…
SONG: Gospel Medley, “All the praise” clip (:43 [1:25-2:08])
The words are Beyonce’s, but it’s Gospel Music Pioneer, Kirk Franklin’s music that lays the foundation of those tight harmonies. Kirk Franklin took Gospel music to a new, younger audience by inviting the popular rhythms of Hip Hop to the church. He took a lot of flak, but his legacy is clear. The song STOMP, featuring Salt of Salt N Pepa fame, Cheryl James, won the grammy for Urban Song of the Year in 1998.
SONG - Kirk Franklin, 1997 STOMP Remix (5:03)
As we climb this branch of Lizzo’s musical tree, we learn that Kirk Franklin’s first song was a reimagining of Elton John’s Bennie & The Jets. Elton John’s found in the family trees of many contemporary artists, so it was fun to see him springing up in the tree of a Gospel artist. Elton John is connected to both Bach and the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin – who’s no relation to Kirk!
SONG - Aretha Franklin, Border Song (Holy Moses) – written by Elton & Bernie (3:20)
Border Song (Holy Moses), written by Elton John and Bernie Taupin, recorded by Aretha Franklin, two influencers in Lizzo’s tree that are influences to each other as well.
Lizzo made a tweet claiming to be “Aretha Franklin for the 2018 Generation” as she dropped her single, Boys.
Dr. Adams and I talked about how that might be true:
LISA: Talk about Cher and Aretha… those two in particular. I'd love to hear your, your comparative, ideas and insights on that.
Dr. Adams: I've never seen Aretha Franklin perform live. I've only seen, you know, videos of her, but she's again, to me, I see her as being the, …I mean, she's like the divas diva. Right? …and just the sort of like the, the stage presence that the two of them have is amazing.
And, and I think Cher is the same way insofar as Cher is... Like when we saw Cher in concert, very much just sort of strides out into the middle of stage in a huge costume and big sets. I mean, she's very much an operatic performer, Cher is. Um, and, and I see Lizzo as kind of a combination of those two because she does, you know, she comes out and she is who she is.
Here’s Lizzo with Boys.
SONG – Lizzo – Boys (2:53)
Now, we’ve still got that second clip from Gospel Medley to cover – the AMEN section at the end.
DESTINY’S CHILD – Gospel Medley “Amen” clip (2:52-3:30)
This was lifted squarely from another gospel artist, Richard Smallwood and the end of his song, Total Praise. Again, it’s a little slower, but you can clearly hear it.
(CLIP Smallwood, Total Praise, Amen section)
Smallwood studied with Dr. Thomas H. Kerr Jr. who was the Chair of Piano at Howard University for over 30 years. He was also the first person of color to give a recital at the National Gallery of Art.
His father, Dr. Kerr, Sr., was as much an accomplished performer as his son. But he didn’t start that way. His family moved to Baltimore in 1902 and he worked as a domestic for white families… making about $5 a month. By age 15, he’d learned violin, piano, and flute, and was the concertmaster for the Baltimore City Colored Orchestra not long after getting to high school, and made a whopping $10 per show. It didn’t take much time before he formed his own group, the Kerr Society Orchestra.
In a 1978 article from The Baltimore Sun – he was 90 at the time - he’s quoted as saying “No jazz. I never did like that jumpy kind of stuff. I like society kind of music. Not the kind the riff-raff would enjoy.”
But the up and down nature of performing was not to his tastes. He wanted to BE society, not play for them. His orchestra helped pay for his tuition to Howard University, one of the nation’s historically black universities, where he studied to become a pharmacist.
For the community around Dr. Kerr SENIOR, it was more than a pharmacy. According to his daughter, “Dad was everybody’s free Doc. He took care of their sicknesses, listened to their troubles, helped the kids with their homework and the soldiers with their allotment applications. He held their money for them, told them stories, wrote their letters, arbitrated their arguments and gave them free notary service.”
Dr. Kerr compounded his own medicines and was quite a successful businessman. He soon began buying up homes in the neighborhood to provide affordable rental housing to his neighbors. He was known to be a wealthy man, easily a millionaire, though he wasn’t one to brag on his riches. In my research, I found this quote, which really seems to sum up his philosophy on life and work.
“Being seen is not what’s important. It’s being somebody. Don’t just act like you’re something. BE something. If you’re something, people will see that you’re something. But if all you’re doing is acting, they’ll see that, too. You aren’t fooling anybody.”
Dr. Kerr, Senior died age 97.
Dr. Kerr, Junior died a little more than 3 years later in a car accident. He studied briefly at Howard before transferring to Eastman School of music to study with Swiss-American pianist Cecile Genhart (hard gQ&), who was responsible for introducing Brahms’ Piano Concerto Number 2 to America.
At the time of his death, Dr. Kerr junior had composed more than one hundred pieces, including works for piano, voice, organ, choir, and chamber ensembles. He had even begun composing an opera that was never completed about the life of Frederick Douglass.
Here’s one of his pieces, a Soliloquy called “Haunted” sung by bass-baritone Alan Williams and accompanied by Kathryn Goodson on piano
(1:22 SONG Soliloquy (Haunted/You Are There! Alan Williams, bass-baritone & Kathryn Goodson, piano)
Under VO Prince – Purple Rain (1:26)
Prince was another major influence for Lizzo. Prince put her on a track with his backing band, 3rdEyeGirl, and kept close watch on her early career. It was his invitation to visit Paisley Park and his solo piano performance of Purple Rain that moved her to tears. After his death, Lizzo made a commitment in honor of Prince to keep her music focused on positivity. That theme pervades her album Special, including the lead single, About Damn Time.
Song: James Galway & Lizzo –pink panther
That was Lizzo with flutist Sir James Galway from their recording session of The Pink Panther, one of my favorite tunes, written by one of my favorite composers, Henry Mancini.
Though her professional career began as a rapper, Lizzo, the Flautist precedes everything else. Taking up flute at 10, while she was growing up in Houston, she counts Irish Flutist, Sir James Galway, AKA, the man with the Golden Flute, as one of her heroes.
Now Galway says flutist. Lizzo Says Flautist. And there’s a pretty heated debate about this in the music world, so I created a video to further stir the pot - you can watch that on our website. But to settle things for THIS episode, Lizzo herself, in a 2022 Interview for NPR’s Fresh Air said this:
Lizzo: I always say flautist, and then, one day, someone's like, it's flutist. I'm like, shut up.
So for today, FLAUTIST, it is.
Here’s Galway’s well-known version of Carnival of Venice by Italian composer and virtuoso flautist - -Giulio Briccialdi [JOO-lee-oh Brih-CHAL-dee].
Clip -James Galway – Carnival of Venice op. 77 (2:40)
Unless you’re familiar with flute repertoire, you probably don’t know the names I’m about to throw at you. Galway studied flute with Marcel Moyse [MWAHZ], who was taught by Paul Taffanel. He’s considered by most to be the founder of the French Flute School, an approach to playing flute that emphasized a light tone and vibrato, much the same way that Taffanel himself played. It also saw flutists moving away from wooden instruments and toward the metal flutes that are more like what we see in performances today.
I learned a lot about the evolution of the flute during my research. You can also watch THAT video on our website. But what did this style of flute playing sound like? Here’s a clip from a French recording in 1928 of Moyse playing Andante Pastoral – a piece written by Taffanel.
CLIP Marcel Moyse playing Andante Pastoral by Taffanel
The French Flute School also reintroduced the work of Johann Sebastian Bach, which had apparently been collecting dust in the French libraries of the 19th century, even while his music was enjoying a renaissance across other parts of Europe. But why? What was it about Bach that warranted Taffanel’s interest in resurrecting his music for Flute?
I spoke with Dr. Daniel R. Melamed, a recently retired member of the musicology department at the IU Jacobs School of Music. His research specialty is in the music of Bach.
“one of the things Bach was really good at was, taking musical ideas and kinds of pieces , from various national traditions, for example, and finding ways to get deeper into their, musical possibilities.
Dr. Melamed helped me climb out on Bach’s branch a bit, where I found two interesting connections. The first, to the Prince of Polyphony, Palestrina:
"Bach, in fact, uh, did take a particular interest in older musical styles and in fact, the 16th century, multi- voice polyphonic musical style represented most prominently by Palestrina… We've got some musical sources either in his hand or that we know he owned of works by Palestrina."
Palestrina and Madrigal music seem to go hand in hand. One account I found said he wrote 140 Madrigals. That style of music came out of an earlier style called the frottola <FRAUGHT-oh-la>. And one of the most well-known composers of the frottola was a guy from the Italian Renaissance of the early 1500’s - Bartolomeo Tromboncino. Not only a rock star on the Frottole scene, but also repeatedly on the wrong side of the law, having to flee the city of Mantua at one point for murdering his wife, of all things… yet somehow, he was welcomed back to write more music for the aristocracy. Oh the privilege!
Here’s one of Tromboncino’s Frottola, Se Ben Hor Non Scopra El Foco performed by Dame Emma Kirkby:
Song – Dame Emma Kirkby – Se ben hor non scopra el foco (1:24)
Now, I said there were two branches in Bach’s tree. The second traces back through Telemann.
(Dr. Melamed’s quote about Telemann)
Bach's contemporary Georg Philipp Telemann, whom Bach, knew quite well. Telemann served, for example, as godfather to his second oldest son, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. That's where he, that's where he got the name.
Telemann incorporated 16th century Lutheran Chorale Tunes and Hymn stanzas into his 18th Century church music. Martin Luther was a bit of a composer and arranger himself, having used Gregorian Chants to build off for some of his music … you know… pie jesu domine… dona dona eis requiem (THWACK) Okay, maybe not THAT particular chant, but you get the idea.
You’d think that as old as it is, there’d be less controversy around Gregorian Chant. And this is where we need to talk about Influence in a different way. My research pointed to a number of origins for chant - and Rome’s effort to eliminate other influences and set new standards. Kind of typical from what I’ve seen of the Holy Roman Empire - subsuming or supplanting whatever came before it. In the case of Chant, there appear to be three types of plainchant that were mostly wiped out when Gregorian Chant became the standard.
I could find only one example, derived from a Celtic chant that dates to the 9th century and is possibly even older than that. It’s called Ibunt Sancti, performed here by Tim Rayborn…
Song – Ibunt Sancti - (4:59)
We’ve covered about 1200 years of musical history to get to Lizzo today. As I said at the beginning, we’ve only scratched the surface. To unpack more of Lizzo’s musical family tree, including our references, extended interviews, and show playlist point your browser to WFIU.org/TheInfluencers.
The Influencers is part of the educational mission of Indiana University and produced by the small but mighty team at WFIU Public Radio in Bloomington Indiana. Our Executive Producers are Eric Bolstridge and John Bailey. Special thanks to our Program Director, Aaron Cain, Dr. Daniel R. Melamed, Dr. Kyle Adams, and Shane “The Doctor” Faber for their contributions to this episode.
I’m Lisa Robbin Young reminding you that you never know what kind of an impact you make on the world around you. Who influences you?
Song – Lizzo – Special (2:45)
