This time last year, Lizzo seemed at the precipice of releasing her fifth studio album then titled Love In Real Life. But, while in the middle of a promo push, she halted the project after its two singles failed to chart and she seemingly shelved the project all together. It seems she wasn’t done with it after all, though. After getting some things off her chest with her mixtape My Face Hurts From Smiling (and its deluxe edition My Face Still Hurts From Smiling) and retooling the project, and Lizzo is now ready to let her new album BITCH loose. And she’s doing so by unleashing the title track as the set’s next single.
“BITCH” shows Lizzo looking to the ’90s to craft her own woman-ifesto. Her constant go-to producers Ricky Reed and Blake Slatkin, along with Zack Sekoff, create a sound that fuses a boom-bap beat with pop and R&B. It’s a formula that’s worked well for Lizzo, and it definitely works here. But also helping the song are a prominent sample of Missy Elliott’s “She's A Bitch” and an interpolation of Meredith Brooks’ “Bitch,” automatically putting it in the feminist tradition of reclaiming the once-derogatory term.
Lyrically, Lizzo confronts the things that people say about her personally and women in general. But rather than be completely defiant, she speaks to the hurt that the words from others can cause. She refocuses that hurt into something triumphant, ultimately declaring on the bridge, “If you call me bad things / I’m gon’ be bad, baby / Get to know me, you’ll see / There ain’t no b***h like me.”
Lizzo gets feisty in the video as she and her crew of dancers don blonde wigs and mesh leotards as they do their thing and look damn good while doing it. The clip revels in the power of women in all facets. But the video also incorporates a bit of a Katt Williams stand-up routine, where he referenced Lizzo and the hate she’s received over the years.
“You can be fat, you can be Black. But you can’t be no fat, Black bitch,” the comedian says while scenes of the women leaning in and Lizzo looking intently at the camera are shown. The inclusion actually gives more depth to the song (and should probably make its way to the album version of the track).
BITCH is set to hit stores on Friday, June 5th and will include previous single “Don’t Make Me Love U” — though previous cuts “Love In Real Life” and “Still Bad” are nowhere to be found. Get a look at the album artwork and tracklist when you scroll below.
Lizzo BITCH tracklist:
1. A Toast
2. Happy 2 Be
3. Don’t Make Me Love U
4. BITCH
5. She Stole My Man
6. Whose Hair Is This
7. Little Black Cat
8. Sexy Ladies
9. That GRRRL
10. Too Nice
11. Like A Crime
12. Gooodmorning!
