Fame in the age of social media kind of sucks — but not even the troll-iest troll can get Lizzo down for long.
That's the message of the singer's new single, "Rumors," which dropped Friday accompanied by a Greco-Roman fantasia of a music video starring Lizzo and her guest on the track, Cardi B.
"Last year, I thought I would lose it/ Read s— on the internet," Lizzo admits, "My smoothie cleanse and my diet/ No, I ain't f— Drake yet."
In the chorus of "Rumors," which rides an ebullient, horn-accented groove, Lizzo takes aim at the haters "spending all your time trying to break a woman down," then reminds them: "Realer s— is going down, baby, take a look around."
"Rumors" is Lizzo's first single since 2019's "Cuz I Love You" album, which after years of work on the margins of show business brought the singer fully into the mainstream. The LP made Lizzo the most-nominated artist at the 62nd Grammy Awards in 2020 with eight nods; she won three prizes, including best pop solo performance for "Truth Hurts," which spent seven weeks atop Billboard's Hot 100.
For Cardi B — who appeared alongside Lizzo in 2019's "Hustlers" movie — "Rumors" follows her recent cameo on Normani's "Wild Side" and comes nearly exactly a year after "WAP," her smash collaboration with Megan Thee Stallion.
In a YouTube livestream before the "Rumors" premiere, Lizzo said the new song "has been a long time coming for your girl," adding that she'd written the song in February.
"If you thought that I was ratchet with my ass hanging out,/ Just wait until the summer when they let me out the house," she sings in "Rumors."
Lizzo is scheduled to play a number of festivals this fall, including a headlining appearance — the first ever by a woman — at Tennessee's Bonnaroo in September.
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