This is a problem that continues into today’s music. Recently, performers Bebe Rexha and Doja Cat released the music video for their collaboration “Baby, I’m Jealous.” The opening skit in the video pays tribute to the 2003 adaptation of “Freaky Friday” starring Lindsay Lohan. Like in the film, Rexha gets a fortune cookie from an Asian woman who works at the restaurant that sends her life into chaos. But unlike the film, the Asian woman does not speak throughout the entire video, and Rexha speaks to her condescendingly as if she does not understand English. Social media has forced stars to confront the controversy they cause, because they also use social media to promote their music. In the early 2010s, there was another resurgence of cultural appropriation in pop music and in a way, I think it may have been the biggest one yet. I remember seeing Billboard’s retrospective look on 2014’s popular music, and I will never forget the headline: “2014 Was the Year That… Cultural Appropriation Dominated the Pop Music Discussion.” Around the same time as Cyrus’s “Bangerz” era, Katy Perry came under fire with her 2014 “Dark Horse” video for appropriating Egyptian and Black
Iggy Azalea is another artist accused of cultural appropriation in 2014, but she didn’t respond in the same way as Katy Perry. Her single “Fancy” was the number one song for six weeks, the most weeks held by a female rapper at that time. Her collaboration with Ariana Grande, “Problem,” only elevated her popularity. She released a handful of commercially successful singles and released a four-time Grammy Award nominated album before people started to get really confused. How does a white woman from Australia sound like a Black woman when her speaking voice sounds absolutely nothing like that? Azalea began a modern day discussion over if certain accents and dialects were deemed inappropriate for people outside that area to emulate. In other words, Azalea has been accused of auditory cultural appropriation and adopting a “blaccent.” In her 2019 Cosmopolitan cover story, Azalea said that cultural appropriation was subjective. “You could ask one person of the same race, ‘Does this affect you?’ and they will say yes,” she said. “But another person will say no. They could be from the same place, same everything, but have different perspectives about it.”
*HOW DOES A WHITE WOMAN FROM AUSTRALIA SOUND LIKE A BLACK WOMAN WHEN HER SPEAKING VOICE SOUNDS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING LIKE THAT? culture. It was the subject of many think pieces on white singers trying on other cultures as accessories. Perry was also called out for her song “This Is How We Do” because of a lyric referring to her nail art as “Japanese-y” and for wearing cornrows in the music video. Perry later apologized for past cultural appropriation during promotion for her 2017 album “Witness.” She went on to say that one of her close friends Cleo, a Black woman, explained to her the issue of her wearing cornrows and opened a dialogue that Perry had never had before. “I listened, and I heard, and I didn’t know,” Perry said. “And I won’t ever understand some of those things because of who I am. I will never understand, but I can educate myself and that’s what I’m trying to do along the way.” Perry is an example of a white pop star who took constructive criticism, stepped a centimeter outside of her privilege and considered the ramifications of borrowing from another culture rather than appreciating it.
She also goes on to say that she used to be really defensive about the accusations plaguing her career, but then stated she had a change of heart. “... I wanted to talk so much about my experience of things I didn’t have,” she said. “I think it felt like I wasn’t acknowledging that there is white privilege and there is institutionalized racism. It seemed to a lot of people like I was living in this bubble or unaware of all these things that people have to experience.” Cosmopolitan writer Jen Ortiz listed two ways to interpret Azalea’s comments. “The charitable interpretation is that Iggy understands that the criticism stems from America’s relationship with race and that that history is fucked up,” Ortiz wrote. “And hey, if that’s how you feel or what you believe, she’s not taking away the fact that it’s real for you. The less charitable one is that she doesn’t care. Either way, she’s going to stop rage-tweeting about it.” Like other artists accused of cultural appropriation, Azalea was forced to respond because the public
THE MIAMI STUDENT MAGAZINE, FALL 2020
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