Lizzo’s new album, Cuz I Love You, arrived last month complete with a Missy Elliott collaboration titled “Tempo.” Although the two Atlantic artists had natural chemistry, their connection dates back to well before Lizzo was famous. In a new interview with The Breakfast Club, the Minneapolis singer explained how Missy inspired her career from an early age.
“Musically Missy Elliott was huge for me,” Lizzo said. “When I was little and I was watching Missy Elliott do her thing and win Grammys. Not only be a writer and producer and performer and style icon, but she was winning Grammys and at the top of the charts. And for me, that gave me the belief in myself. I was like, ‘She can do it. She’s a weird black girl, I’m a weird black girl.’”
In late March, they released their first collaboration, “Tempo,” co-produced by Lizzo and Ricky Reed. Lizzo explained that they had linked up in the studio a year earlier:
We’re both on Atlantic and I was working on this album, Cuz i Love You, but at that point I wanted to make trap music. I wanted to freestyle and get drunk. So they sent me to Means Street [Studio] in Atlanta and Missy happened to be in the studio at the time and she was like, ‘Yeah, send Lizzo through.’ So I went in and I played her some of my songs and she was like, ‘This shit fire.’ And then she was like, ‘I want you to freestyle.’ So she was just playing tracks and I was freestyling on it. We did that maybe two or three times and then I never saw her again after that, and I was like, ‘Wow that was an amazing dream that I had.’
Lizzo eventually drew upon that relationship when she created “Tempo.” “That was a year later and I was like, ‘Yo do you think Missy would hop on this?,’” she said. Missy obliged, and the song was born.
“Tempo” addresses body image, with Lizzo singing about needing a good beat to dance to:
Slow songs, they for skinny hoes
Can’t move all of this here to one of those
I’m a thick bitch, I need tempo (Tempo)
Fuck it up to the tempo
This too was inspired in part by Missy. “She definitely influenced me to push the boundaries on what I could do with style,” Lizzo said, remembering how Missy’s image differed from other female rappers at the time.
“Tempo” has earned nearly 30,000 pageviews on Genius since its release, as well as 15 million streams on Spotify. It also brings a lifetime of Lizzo’s admiration for Missy full circle.
Watch her full interview above and read all the lyrics to Lizzo’s “Tempo” featuring Missy Elliott on Genius now.
