Azealia Banks is targeting Lizzo on X

Azealia Banks, the erstwhile rapper who now spends her remaining cultural capital starting online spats with everyone from disgraced Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro to child star Skai Jackson, has settled on her latest target: Lizzo, who kicked off the interaction by posting on X, “I like when azaelia banks calls me ‘fat lizzo’…it’s endearing.” Banks responded two hours later with a simple “work fat lizzo.” But this was not enough. To know Banks is to understand that tweeting her name is akin to flashing a bat signal—that invoking her once is the equivalent of saying “Bloody Mary” three times in the mirror. 

Once Banks catches your scent, she won’t let it go. If you post selfies with “Fat Lizzo” as the caption, she will reply with “Lizzo girl pick them tiddys up PLEASE.” When a fan responded to her initial post claiming Lizzo was using Banks to sell her forthcoming album BITCH—whose debut single received a less-than-enthusiastic response online—something in Banks activated. Over the next 12 hours, she fired off half a dozen posts on X, launching into a fatphobic tirade against Lizzo, suggesting she sell BITCH with a “lizzo burger” and clarifying, by way of insult, that she was not “ozempiana.” These posts, which included her calling Lizzo’s vocals “congested and greasy” and saying the phrase “fat palestine,” appeared in between Banks’ long and winding analysis of the British Tory party and her insistence that the U.S. doesn’t “give a fuck about NATO.” 

Lizzo has been public about her weight-loss journey in recent years, announcing that she shed 60 pounds while rejecting any use of GLP-1s. In this last respect, Banks was technically correct. To be clear, though: Azealia Banks also just loves calling people fat. Her victims thus far include, but are not limited to: Donald Trump, Nicki Minaj, Jelly Roll, Doja Cat, Rihanna, Kanye West, Adele, Lady Gaga’s backup dancers, all of middle America, and Lana Del Rey. This isn’t even the first time she’s called Lizzo fat; in 2019, Banks took to Instagram stories to deliver the memorable invective: “I hate you, fat Lizzo.” She later claimed Lizzo was “making a fool out of herself” and becoming a “fat girl joke.” 

Four years later, Banks briefly did an about-face to defend Lizzo from a greater Banksian enemy: Ye. In an interview with conservative pundit Tucker Carlson, Ye called the promotion of obesity “demonic” and claimed it was facilitating a “genocide of the Black race.” Banks responded on Instagram stories again, arguing that Ye couldn’t “be trying to lollipop off the 4-year discussion about LIzzo’s health and weight when he has an entire McDonald’s commercial.” This was, perhaps, more an anti-Kanye sentiment than a pro-Lizzo one.

To say Banks has returned to feuding with Lizzo would be a misnomer: a feud requires two participants. In response, Lizzo posted a picture of herself captioned “fat Lizzo” and has otherwise stayed mum about Banks’ discombobulated responses to her innocuous initial tweet. Deprived of engagement, Banks naturally returned to posting cooking videos and ranting about British nationalism, Nicki Minaj, and Zionism. You win some, you lose some.

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