Hi, everyone. Misthony Taketano here, the internet's busiest music nerd, and it's time for a review of this new Lizzo mixtape, My Face Hurts from Smiling.

Lizzo is a singer, songwriter, Detroit native, and also on this mixtape, rapper, and arrives at a very interesting point in her career, as her last record Special received more mixed reviews than I think any LP she's put out so far. I personally thought it contained some of her most annoying tracks ever, like that freaking Beastie Boys interpolation. I'm still trying to erase that from my memory.

And not too long after the release of this album, Lizzo found herself knee deep in the midst of an employee lawsuit as numerous employees of her Big Grrrl touring company dragged her into court over allegations of harassment, among some other pretty embarrassing things that we covered in detail on the Fantano channel. All the discourse and discussion around these allegations really seemed to put a major dent in Lizzo's public image, causing her to go into a public hibernation period.

That is until recently, or really toward the end of last year, when the charges directly against Lizzo were dropped. However, this was more due to a technicality because the judge in the case believed that those suing Lizzo needed to basically bring this lawsuit to her touring company, not so much Lizzo herself directly.

From what I understand, as of right now, Big Grrrl Touring Incorporated still stands as a defendant in the ongoing case. It's not like this case and suit are entirely over ,or that Lizzo is completely absolved of any of the allegations that were leveled against her in the first place. But having the charges against her directly dropped seems to have created enough wiggle room for Lizzo to come out of hiding once again and really start working on a new album cycle and doing the podcast circuit, basically trying to take every opportunity she can to repair her public image.

Now, I want to say personally, I was really disappointed when a lot of the information came out that did around these allegations. I personally think Lizzo is a really cool, funny, talented, charismatic, interesting artist. A lot of her early singles, I think, are pretty great. Her Cuz I Love You record was a really fantastic album, a great breakout LP that contained a lot of very enjoyable songs that showcase not only her songwriting talent, but her vocal range too. And while I didn't like Special, I mostly chalked that up to her going into more of a commercial direction on that one. And maybe with a change, of course, we could get another record that is on the level of a Cuz I Love You.

But with Lizzo withdrawing due to the harassment suit, the likelihood of that happening anytime soon seemed pretty slim, and the chances seemed even slimmer once Lizzo started to post publicly again and drop some new music, really reset her sound and her career. We started getting these new cuts and singles that saw her dabbling in an indie rock direction, "Still Bad" and "Love in Real Life". Mind you, I'm not really crazy about any of these tracks, and I'm not hopeful that a forthcoming rock, funk, disco fusion LP from Lizzo will be all that great.

I'm even more worried now about Lizzo finding her musical footing going forward with the release of this surprise mixtape because, yes, from what I understand, we still have an album on the way, but we now have this new batch of tracks to chew on. It's a very trim 13 track rap mixtape. It's a project that, frankly, I am a little torn on. Torn on because the tracks and songwriting, for the most part, are very direct, punchy, hooky, to the point. The production is hugely inspired by Southern hip hop, both new and old. There's even a funny Mike Jones interpolation in the mix on the last track. When it comes to Southern rap, chopped & screwed, that thing, Lizzo really does seem to be on her shit here and really does have a taste and an appreciation for the genre when incorporating certain lines and flows and references.

On top of that, despite Lizzo not really being a rapper primarily, she has a great voice for it. I mean, everything on previous records that she was able to showcase through her singing and her performances in terms of her sense of humor and charisma, I feel like has an even greater opportunity to shine when she's just spitting bars, especially when here and there she's able to work in a bit of humor, something silly, something sassy, something flirty.

So yeah, that's great. Those are all good things. But I find a lot of this tape to be derivative and absolutely difficult to stomach because a great deal of it feels just one big massive cope, and feels less like a genuine artistic expression and more like another round of PR and trying to basically shift public perception around her in the wake of these allegations and this lawsuit that has been dropped against her.

I mean, right from the intro track on the record, she's yelling and screaming and crashing out. That is the title of the song, "Crash Out". Really just flipping shit over the idea that she has been destroyed and attacked and dragged through the mud by these people who are suing her. She's doing everything she can to basically depict this situation as her being the innocent small bean and she was just attacked and ruined for no reason whatsoever. Which, again, given that the charges against her directly were dropped off of a technicality, I don't know if I fully buy into that idea. I mean, even if Lizzo wasn't actually responsible or involved in some of the worst and most embarrassing allegations in that lawsuit, it's still not really a great look, in my opinion, to come out this hard on this mixtape and supplant maybe a thorough and genuine and authentic analysis of the situation, maybe even a slight mea culpa to an extent, with just blind anger and rage.

Thankfully, though, outside of tracks like this as well as "Cut Em Off", Lizzo doesn't seem to focus directly on this situation all that much. I mean, when she does, it's pretty grating. But trying to set the record straight on just this topic is not enough for Lizzo, because throughout the rest of the record, I feel like she's doing everything she can to prove to the audience that she's not hurt, and she's living her best life, and she's doing cool stuff in real life, and making lots of money, and having lots of sex with whoever she wants – or whenever she doesn't want as well, because there's also a track on here about not having sex.

And in between those bars, there are just constant, constant, constant shoutouts and advertisements to her Fabletics collaboration, because while we're on here, we might as well try to get you to buy as much shape wear as possible.

There are a lot of flows and deliveries and bars that to me read like she's trying to do her best Megan thee Stallion impression. Those are really not that interesting.

I will say the first leg of the record does contain a decent string of bops from "Just For Fun" to "Gotcho Bitch", where I love the shoutouts on that track toward the back end. The Doja Cat feature on "Still Can't Fuck" that I alluded to earlier is really solid.

But then past this point, we get some of the worst tracks and non-starters on the tape, like rrapping in a melodic flow that borrows from Beethoven's "Fur Elisa". No, thanks. I don't want anything to do with that. Or the annoying vocal repetitions throughout the book of "Dropping On It". Yeah, I can't. I really can't. Also, I should sidebar here and say, for a record that is so jam-packed with bars about sex, the vast majority of them are not sexy. "What that dick do? Now I'm curious, Boosky / Oh, period, Poosky / And it's bigger than Drewski / I told him no, boo / And now he eating my sushi" – which is not only the way a 14-year-old would describe it, but you told him no first.

"Summer Shit" as well as "IRL", I think both have potential, but those are also two of the most half baked and underwritten tracks on the mixtape. Some of these songs really do I feel like suffer from their brevity to an extent. And while, again, I can't really stand "Cut Em Off", I do think "Ditto" is a very solid finish to the mixtape, even if the ride up until this point is a pretty bumpy one.

But yeah, with this tape, I'm not really crazy about it. I'm not enjoying it that much, and I just feel I feel like there's a lot of lost potential here because, again, I do think Lizzo, as evidenced by the material on this record, some of the beats, some of the flows, she has great taste in rap. She has a voice that applies itself really well to rapping, and she picks some good beats, too. However, it would have been better to employ just all of these ideas and all of this talent to a project that just wasn't so obviously deeply insecure and trying to make up for something.

But I suppose I suppose if there is a potential upside to this mixtape, it's that whatever Lizzo is doing here in regards to just venting about the events of the past couple of years in her life, she's just like, expelling it now, getting rid of it so that whenever she does put out her eventual proper commercial album, we're not having to deal with that drama there, which again, if there's more rock stuff going on with that record, yeah, again, I'm not excited about it, but at least we're not going to be dealing with that on top of the demons that Lizzo is wrestling with here.

So, yeah, I'm going to leave it there and say that this project for me was like a light to decent 4.

Anthony Fantano, Lizzo, forever.