Lexington, how you feelin’? Ready for pop star flute goddess Lizzo’s Rupp concert?

Just in case you need further proof of the positivity that fortifies Lizzo’s music – a confirmation of the affirmation, so to speak – then check out her acceptance speech after winning the top prize at this year’s Grammy Awards: Record of the Year for “About Damn Time.”

In front of the A-list competitors she beat out for the trophy – a pack that included Beyonce, Adele and Harry Styles – Lizzo championed the marginalized. Flanked by Ricky Reed and Blake Slatkin, the production team that helped make “About Damn Time” a massive pop hit a year ago at this time, she spoke from experience, just as the song that now won her even more global recognition had done. Her speech embraced a love of personal identity and purpose in a world of mainstream norms that is often quick to ridicule.

“Anybody at home who feels misunderstood or on the outside looking in like I did, just stay true to yourself because I promise you, you will find people. You will attract people in your life who believe in you and support you.”

Of course, there was more going on. If any emotional component mirrors the positivity of Lizzo’s music, it’s exuberance. Her Grammy speech wasn’t a polished recitation. It came complete with three expletives that likely sent network censors reeling. But they weren’t the usual bomb modifiers that many pop stars employ as tired credentials for palling up to their fanbase.

Instead, Lizzo seemed to let them loose out of pure giddiness, the same way a few million other people do.

Relatability is usually a more prevalent goal of country music celebrities than pop stars. For successive generations, audiences have viewed rock, pop, R&B and hip-hop artists the way most film aficionados look at movie stars – with a sense of celebrity status that purposely elevates and, ultimately, distances them from any sense of the real world.

Lizzo – born in Detroit as Melisa Viviane Jefferson – is different. That’s not to say you’re likely to bump into her anytime soon at Kroger. But from the time her stardom began to take hold in 2019, a hefty level of myth-busting was at work.

Her looks didn’t fit what was usually promoted commercially as “glamorous” in the pop world, yet there she was getting her groove on in her music videos with as much joy and authority as any pop star pin-up. She didn’t succumb to the narrative power plays of many pop and hip-hop acts, either. Sure, she speaks bluntly with her music, but the often-narcissistic sense of self-importance that swirls around the image consciousness of so many pop celebrities is refreshingly absent. She has even made playing the flute within a pop context seem cool.

A few minutes viewing the video for “About Damn Time” further explains the Lizzo persona. It opens with her dressed in sweats gulping Vitamin Water and winds up with the singer decked out in a sequin dress playing the flute amid a pool full of synchronized swimmers. Fun and assertiveness – traits that are in abundance throughout Lizzo’s music. They remain qualities that sit at the heart of her stardom.

“Fame happens to you, and it’s more of an observation of you,” Lizzo told Ramin Setoodeh of “Variety” in 2022. “People become famous and it’s, like, my DNA didn’t change. Nothing changed about me. My anxiety didn’t go away. My depression didn’t go away. The things that I love didn’t go away.”

Okay, that covers image and intent, to a degree. But what about the music itself? Not the message it offers, but the groove that propels it. That may just be the catalyst for why Lizzo became a celeb with such broad audience appeal beginning in 2019.

Again, listen to “About Damn Time” or another infectious tune from 2022’s “Special” album, “Birthday Girl.” What you experience are roughly 40 years of pop soul inspirations squeezed into concise three-minute tunes. You hear the mingling of ’60s pop-infused R&B, late ’70s disco soul and the comparatively modern beat structure of hip-hop.

So far, such reeling in the years has given Lizzo considerable staying power on the charts. An initial run of hits that included “Tempo” and a re-release of “Truth Hurts” broke her career open in 2019. The three-plus years between those songs and “About Damn Time” would have normally been enough of a gap for pop audiences to move on to a newer and bigger deal. But Team Lizzo never let up. Another early proclamation of positivity, “Good as Hell,” received a second life late in 2019 while a non-album single collaboration with Cardi B, “Rumors,” became a massive crossover non-album single in 2021.

Still, “The Sign,” the lead-off tune to “Special,” unfolded like the salutation of a friend who has seemingly been away for a lifetime. Greeting us with an expletive, Lizzo quickly fills us in on a far shorter time span – specifically, life as she has known it since the COVID-19 pandemic kicked in three years ago.

“Did you miss me? I’ve been home since 2020,” she sings/raps. “I’ve been twerkin’ and making smoothies. It’s called healing. And I feel better since you seen me last.”

Want to further examine the stylistic lineage that has made Lizzo one of the most popular female artists of her generation? Then look again to last winter’s Grammy speech and how it paid tribute to a pair of giants. One was Beyonce, an artist she not only revered but had just beaten out for Record of the Year.

“Beyonce, in the fifth grade I skipped school to see you perform. My sister, she got me out of school. It was literature. I’m good.

“You changed my life. The way you made me feel ... I want to make people feel this way with my music.”

The other was Prince, the late pop/funk innovator, to whom Lizzo dedicated her Grammy win to with equal parts adulation and attitude.

“When we lost Prince, I decided to dedicate my life to making positive music.”

“If my positivity bothers you, what’s wrong with ’choo?”

Lizzo

When: April 22, 8 p.m.

Where: Rupp Arena, 430 W. Vine St.

Tickets: $69.50-$328.50 through ticketmaster.com.