Source: Sheri Determan/WENN.com / WENN
I was happy to see Miley Cyrus going out of her way to help the family of Janice Freeman in light of her recent passing. It was a beautiful gesture. But Miley Cyrus has a history of appealing to Black folk in one way or another and then doing something side-eye worthy.
In the past it’s been picking up Black aesthetics, vernacular, musical stylings and dance moves. She would be far from the only White artist to do something like that. Some of my favorite White artists, (Teena Marie, Justin Timberlake, Adele etc.) do the same. The reach of our art can’t be contained and in many cases with credit, we don’t mind sharing. In fact, several Black men in the music industry, were happy to lend Miley their cosign. The difference with Cyrus is that she picks up “Blackness” as a form of marketing. She picks it up and puts it down when convenient or when she gets tired.
But the real issue is that fact that when she drops it, she then goes on a campaign to disparage the very elements she claimed.
In 2017, in praising Kendrick Lamar’s “Humble,” she dissed Hip Hop as a whole.
“I also love that new Kendrick [Lamar] song [“Humble”]: ‘Show me somethin’ natural like ass with some stretch marks,'” she said. “I love that because it’s not ‘Come sit on my dick, suck on my cock.’ I can’t listen to that anymore. That’s what pushed me out of the hip-hop scene a little. It was too much ‘Lamborghini, got my Rolex, got a girl on my cock’ — I am so not that.”
But two years later, she quotes a lyric from the biggest Hip Hop group out right now and posts this image of herself, draped in jewelry.
Perhaps she found her career in need of an additional boost…again.
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