Lizzo

• Coconut Oil [Question Everything/RCA EP, 2016] **
• Cuz I Love You [Atlantic/Nice Life, 2019] A-
• Special [Nice Life, 2022] A-

Consumer Guide Reviews:

Coconut Oil [Question Everything/RCA EP, 2016]
Still figuring it out on this 2016 EP, her clear, capable voice hasn't gained the voracity her image sets you up for. ("Good as Hell," "Phone") **

Cuz I Love You [Atlantic/Nice Life, 2019]
Bigging up via an exuberantly overstated intensity that doesn't quit when the tempo eases and only slows to a creep for some erotica that gets loud at a climax worthy of the name, this long-running hopeful makes good on an iconicity worthy of her casual pride and skilled transition from rapper to singer. She's so talented it's hard to believe it took her till 31 to get the job done until you consider how many doubts and fears she must have faced down first. Part of the way she enacts her pride is to pretend it comes effortlessly, as is her right. But you can be sure she has some confessionals in store. A-

Special [Nice Life, 2022]
Catchy but not truly melodic, more dance than funk, assuming a common tongue where what once was p.c. jargon is now colloquial, this long-aborning Grammy follow-up with Max Martin in the house comes across simultaneously spontaneous and thought through and earned both ways. She's "heavy" and "big" and "thick" but never "fat"; she's "codependent" and proud she's gotten that far; she feels unending love that may well not stay that way for a clearly identified man and at least one woman and asks a major lover "Do you say this shit to other people?" She's special--and on a mission to convince us that all of us are too. A-