 Oh my God, how do I describe where I'm from? Well, my name is Lizzo and I'm from a lot of places. I was born in Detroit, I grew up in Houston, and my career popped off in Minneapolis. Very nerdy in school. In school, I like wanted to be a know-it-all, smart aleck, I was always raising my hand. I remember once I was like, uh, why do you gotta be smart? I was like, that's not me. Playing flute when I was 12 or 11. And then I was writing like pop songs and stuff with my friends since I was nine, honestly. I remember third and fourth grade hanging out with my friends, Pips and Mary. We had a little band called Peace, Love and Joy. I was peace. Mary was love and Pips was joy, and we would just write these little spice girl songs. I didn't really understand, I could be in the industry until like, I moved to Minneapolis. But I always knew I was gonna play music. Like I wanted to be in like, the New York Phil or play in the Boston Pops. Like I really wanted to be a flute player. I learned how to sing by being in a rock band. So I lied to these people on Craigslist and said that I was a singer, but I was really a rapper. And I was like, I'm just gonna go in there and charm them with my personality and then maybe they'll become my band. Like I was so excited. And at that point I was like, what do I do? I guess I just gotta sing. So I closed my eyes and I just pretended to sing as best I could. And they were like, I don't know what you just said but you really meant it. You can be in the band. And I learned how to sing through rock music. I did sleep out of my car and I slept in this rehearsal space that my band practiced in that was like very sketchy. And I slept on my drummer's floor and I swear his bedroom was like the size of this room. And I slept like underneath damn near his computer desk on his floor. So people really helped me out back in the day. I feel like I owed them all checks. And I remember once it got so indescribably hard and I called my mom and I was like, I don't know if this is like God telling me to just stop or if this is like the devil trying to keep me from my purpose. It was that difficult. I think I had in real time a realization like this is all a part of your story. My album is called Cause I Love You. I had a whole different name for my album before. I was so in love with this one idea of what I wanted my album to be called but I wasn't listening to the songs. And then when I listened to these songs that I wrote and I listened to Cause I Love You, I was like, wow. I wrote them cause I love myself. I wrote them cause I love the people I'm writing these songs for to help them heal. Cause I love you just sums up everything and everything that I've been through. You know you a star, you can touch the sky. I know that it's hard but you have to try. If you need advice, let me simplify. It's important for me to be inclusive period because my entire story has been based around being excluded. When I was able to be in a position of privilege where I can invite people into a space which is my music, which is my social media. I made a conscious decision to make sure that it was inclusive for everyone so no one could ever feel like how I felt.