Lately, it seems like Lizzo is being accused of plagiarism left, right, and centre. On top of her making headlines by publicly shaming a delivery driver for allegedly stealing her food, it hasn’t been a great few months for the singer’s reputation. So today’s news has been a welcome change for Lizzo stans getting seriously tired out of the bad news cycle.
“I just took a DNA Test, turns out I’m a credited writer for the number one song on Billboard,” tweeted British singer Mina Lioness, after Lizzo gave her an official writing accreditation for her song ‘Truth Hurts.’
As you’ll probably be aware, ‘Truth Hurts’ opens with the line “I just took a DNA test, turns out I’m 100% that bitch.” It’s a phrase so iconic and inescapable that it’s already become slightly annoying — it’s been referenced by everyone from Hillary Clinton to whoever runs the Twitter account of Virgin Trains.
But although Lizzo undeniably popularised the term, she didn’t invent it – Mina Lioness tweeted the phrase in 2017, inspiring a meme in the process.
“In 2017, while working on a demo, I saw a meme that resonated with me,’ Lizzo tweeted yesterday, ‘… I later used the line in Truth Hurts… I later learned that a tweet inspired the meme. The creator of the tweet is the person I am sharing my success with…” Lizzo said, to which Mina responded with a series of tweets thanking her.
“I have received nothing but love from her through our communications, so I truly do thank her”, Mina wrote. But things haven’t always been so rosy between Mina and Lizzo (or Lizzo’s management): the decision to credit Mina is a culmination of a months-long struggle, which began when Lizzo tried to copyright the ‘DNA test’ phrase, with the intention of using it on a range of merchandise.
Back in August, Mina tweeted: “What I cannot get over is how brazen Lizzo and her team have been in ignoring my whole presence. They’re doing it because they know I have no capital to address her. I’m just the poor Black girl from London that don’t have a dog in the fight.”
She continued: “All these Black Women in the industry that have been ripped off and stolen from… and Lizzo sat back and let her co-writer steal from me?”
Lizzo wasn’t quite so conciliatory at the time, flatly denying ever having seen the tweet and describing the accusation she stole it as ‘crazy’.
It would appear that this situation has now been resolved satisfactorily for both parties, but this isn’t the end of Lizzo’s legals troubles — she is currently embroiled in a dispute with producer duo the Raisen brothers. They claim they should be given a credit for ‘Truth Hurts’ because the ‘100% that bitch’ line was used on ‘Healthy’, an unreleased track on which they collaborated with Lizzo, along with some other songwriters. Just how many people can claim credit for a single sentence?
Unlike her (eventual) willingness to credit Mina Lioness, this is a charge that Lizzo categorically denies, so much so that she’s taking the brothers to court. Her lawsuit claims that the brothers have ‘‘embarked on an escalating campaign of harassment against [her]”.