Turns out Lizzo is ’100% that bitch’ who gives credit where she feels it’s due.
On Wednesday, the singer responded on Twitter to multiple allegations that she plagiarised her now-famous lyric, “I just took a DNA test, turns out I’m 100% that bitch” from hit song Truth Hurts.
Last year, Lizzo, whose real name is Melissa Jefferson, tweeted that she saw a meme on Instagram that said “I’m 100% that bitch” while she was working on her 2017 demo.
In her statement, she explained that the meme “resonated” with her, and she wrote, then sang, the now-famous line on her demo.
“I later used the line in Truth Hurts,” she wrote.
Lizzo added that she later learned that the meme was inspired by a tweet.
The tweet was written by British singer Mina Lioness, who posted, “I did a DNA test and found out I’m 100% that bitch” on Twitter in 2017.
In February 2018, Lioness engaged with Lizzo on Twitter over the lyric, telling her: “Now everyone believes those were your words, when in fact they were mine. My creativity, my wit and my comedy.”
At the time, Lizzo claimed she had never seen Lioness’ tweet and was purely inspired by the meme it created.
“I am the creator of that meme,” Lioness shot back on Twitter. “The writers credit lands here.”
In her statement, Lizzo rejected a separate allegation of plagiarism linked to Turth Hurts by crediting Lioness’ tweet instead.
She wrote: “The creator of the tweet is who I’m sharing my success with,” though she never calls Lioness by name.
“I just took a DNA Test, turns out I’m a credited writer for the number one song on Billboard,” Lioness tweeted shortly after Lizzo’s statement was published.
Representatives for Atlantic Records, Lizzo’s label, told HuffPost that Lioness will receive credit for the song. They did not say whether she will be compensated.
In a separate statement, a representative for Warner Chappell Music, Inc. also denied allegations of copyright infringement from artist CeCe Peniston, who claimed that Lizzo’s song Juice lifted from Peniston’s song Finally.
And although Lizzo has attempted to make things right with Lioness, she is not doing the same for Justin Raisen, a producer and songwriter who came forward with another plagiarism allegation last week on Instagram.
In Raisen’s post, he says that he, his brother Jeremiah Raisen, and other songwriters not only contributed to the famous lyric in Truth Hurts but also helped with the melody during a collaborative studio session in April 2017.
According to Raisen’s post, his creative claim to the lyric is that the meme “came up” during their session.
Lizzo rejected Raisen’s allegations on Wednesday, saying that he and others “did not help me write any part” of Truth Hurts.
“There was no one in the room when I wrote Truth Hurts, except me, Ricky Reed, and my tears,” she wrote. “That song is my life, and its words are my truth.”
