Lizzo is known for making headlines and major waves in the media no matter the moves she makes. The pop star uses social media to share snippets of her life, promote her Yitty clothing brand, and connect with her fans and haters. Using the stitch option on TikTok, Lizzo has recently made herself the subject of yet another headline, calling out non-Black creators all over the internet using AAVE–African American Vernacular English, a colloquial dialect.  

The Tik Tok creator Lizzo stitched with appears to be a white woman with a voiceover or “sound” and she used the phrase “type shi*t,” but did so in a made-up blaccent aka AAVE. The “Special” singer popped up and asked, “Even better, why don’t we bring back gatekeeping so that AAVE is reserved for the people who created it and grew up speaking it.” 

Lizzo continued, “So that all these people that are now talking like Black people because they read words on the internet and don’t know the origin and don’t participate in the culture don’t overuse it and then things like this happen.”

Folks across the internet are adopting AAVE as if it is a trend. Some have even called it “internet speak,” thus erasing the culture and color out of casually speaking as an African American.

For Lizzo, it’s deeper than words a person can or cannot say or how they say them. She went on to explain why she’s so passionate about the topic. “Because ‘ganglish’ is definitely the new ‘thug,' When the police would call someone a ‘thug’ but it’s really a Black person, which is the new hard ‘r’ N-word.” 

Lizzo connected the dots on the folks on the internet attempting to use Black people’s culture but still contribute to the systems that keep racism alive and, ultimately…killing us. Some would say it’s not that serious and it’s just social media, while others will wholeheartedly back up Lizzo and confirm that non-Black people tend to want Black people’s rhythm and not the blues.

Lizzo ended her PSA by saying, “Maybe if these internet people get sick of it, we can just continue to use our dialect in peace…type sh*t.”