How a message about embracing one’s natural self turned into an attack on black men for their treatment of deeper-toned, kinky-haired black women.
By Judayah Murray

“…y’all got ‘til April 7th to get y’all sh*t together,” Kendrick Lamar spat at a standstill in the track The Heart Part 4 that released on March 23, 2017. The mix of his abrasive lyrics and fiery hot bars produced an amazing that had the world of hip hop shook. The fans made tweets, jokes and memes until Lamar unexpectedly dropped the single “HUMBLE.” with a VEVO video on youtube. That is when things got serious.

The day after the song dropped, I urged one of my college professors to premiere the video on the Smartboard in the front of our class if we had enough time at the end of class. After plenty of begging and pleading, she acknowledged my request and began to type the word into YouTube’s search bar: “HUMBLE.”

The video opened with a perfectly contrasted image of Lamar dressed as the Pope with one single spotlight shining on him from an elevated open window as his name flashed across the screen.

The beat dropped. The world stopped. My head bopped. “Okay, Kendrick! I see you!”, a student yelled.

“If I quit this season, I’d still be the greatest”
The entire song consisted of Lamar listing reasons why he is simply the best in the game and why no other rapper should ever put themselves beside nor above him. Afterall, “there’s levels to it, you and I know!”

His chorus encouraged his competitors to “sit down”, as he disrespectfully referred to them as “Lil B-tch” and advised them to “be humble”.

Listeners and onlookers bobbed their heads up and down to the hard beat, some not being able to resist a “dab” or two. My professor seemed to appreciate the sound and musicality as well.

As we reached the end of the video, and Kendrick reminded us to “be humble” one last time before he descended the stairs, my professor called our attention to ask what seemed like a simple question: “So,” she said, “who’s the ‘lil b-tch?”

“Drake!” I yelled at the same time another student said, “Big Sean!”
We both looked at each other and laughed before we admitted we really did not know who he was referring to.

Some fans argue that it really was Drake that Lamar was coming for. After all, the Canadian rapper had just released his album “More Life” almost two weeks prior, and Lamar did say, “My fans can’t wait for me to son your punk a– and crush your whole little sh-t,” when the beat switched up swiftly in The Heart Part 4.

Still, other fans think he was definitely gunning for Big Sean, ironically referring to him as “Lil B-tch”.

While stans, or obsessive fans, struggled to riddle that one, a social media user by the name of Aurielle Marie, or @ElleOfTwoCities, as she goes by on twitter, thought he had a different target altogether.

“I’m so f*ckin’ sick and tired of the Photoshop / Show me somethin’ natural like afro on Richard Pryor”

Some black women on twitter went up in arms at a certain part in Lamar’s song when he suggested that he was sick of women being photoshopped and faked to fit some sort of plastic standard of beauty. He noted that he would rather see the natural form of her, using Richard Pryor as an example to express his desire to see kinkier textures being accepted on the big screen.

@ElleofTwoCities, for one, was certainly not here for what she considered to be total hypocrisy. She created a whole thread full of reasons why she was not pleased with the visuals Lamar chose for his video. She starts it off with: “I’m tired of Black women being attacked b/c we try to keep up w/ the impossible beauty standards set by men.”

Another fan, Bode Williams–one of the many voices of the british ESNpodcast, who goes by @BigWahala on twitter, fired back with his own thread full of reasons why he was baffled that black women were so upset. He started his thread off with, “I couldn’t believe how many women feel like he attacked them for saying he wants to see something natural.”

@ElleofTwoCities opted out of being interviewed, but her thread should still speak for itself. She went on for about 35 tweets or so explaining that men in the rap and entertainment industry seem to love to condemn black women who wear weave and make up and know their way around editing programs to enhance their beauty, while simultaneously bashing those who wear their natural, kinky textures or bare skin when it all does not fit a certain aesthetic. She used Lupita N’yongo as her example.

This is one of the biggest issues Aurielle tweets to expose–men who scream “natural hair, natural face’, but have very strict guidelines as to what constitutes as appropriate and attractive under these categories.

Wahala, as he preferred to be referred to as, admitted that when he hears the term “Video Vixen”, the first image that comes to mind for him is “either [a] light skin black, mixed race or Afro-Latina woman [who is] very curvy… [with] long straight hair–either relaxed or weaved.”

“I have, and always have [had] a serious issue with the largest/curviest woman on set always coincidentally being the darkest one too…Video after video, somehow y’all only like dark skinned women to represent a slightly non-normative aesthetic? Not feeling it…Feels very “Aunt Jemima”, very “Bessie”, very “Mammy”. Just me? Ok,” Aurielle tweets.

“I think it plays a massive part in regards to their body shape and how women look at themselves,” Wahala says, “Women, especially black women, are continually being pressured on their appearance against a constantly changing definition of what is considered ‘beautiful’. The music videos and lyrics are definitely making an impact on them along with other aspects of society.”

For years now, black women have been featured in music videos where the song lyrics refer to them as “big booty b-tches.” Pop That, a hit single by French Montana that objectifies brown women both lyrically and visually, still plays in clubs today while we twerk carelessly.

“You only need to look at a grossly expanding surgical enhancement business and culture to see its effects on the everyday woman,” Wahala continues, “Hip Hop sets trends in a lot of areas, whether it be fashion or cars, or in this case: beauty. So if a particular image is being constantly pushed into the masses as a what we see as the definition of beauty, and you as a woman don’t see yourself like that in the mirror, you are likely to aspire [to attain] it. It has got to the point that even the words of your partner who you know loves you and finds you attractive doesn’t necessarily have the same impact as the images you are fed on screen and that is sad.”

While it is not the sole duty of hip hop and rap artists to uplift black women, it does not hurt to place a bit of responsibility where it is due.

“We are constantly surrounded by all sorts of media and we construct our identities in part through media images we see,” says Arielle Cutler, a 2011 graduate of Hamilton College who received a grant to study the media’s effect on women’s body image.

“The more girls are exposed to thin-ideal kinds of media, the more they are dissatisfied with their bodies and with themselves overall,” she said.

Wahala agreed. “Some black women can’t even wear their “natural” hair to work without being questioned and at times frown on by their peers. I definitely think the world makes it difficult for women especially black women to just be themselves and look how they wish without fear of negative critique from both men and women of whatever race,” he said.

There are certainly deep-rooted misunderstandings between black women and black men that results in a sort of dissonance in their societal relationship. Not a day goes by on my timeline that I do not see a black man tweeting outlandish reasons as to why he will not date black women, nor a bitter tweet from a black woman about her extreme disgust, distrust and disinterest in black men.

“…without a shadow of  a doubt, men are being influenced daily by the images they see in rap videos and rap music. Men are quick to dismiss a woman who doesn’t have a large cleavage or big bum [because] they don’t fit the ideals of what is considered beautiful. Men are chasing the women [that look like the women] they see in the music videos or the strip clubs [because] this what is being portrayed to them as beautiful,” said Wahala, “Men are also very fickle so even though they themselves might find a woman attractive if they are not fitting what their close network sees as beautiful they may think twice to date the woman. For me, it is a major problem for black male and female relations.”

“As someone who LOVES the snot out of K-dot, I’m telling y’all, he is not supporting women on this record. This ain’t love...this isn’t to say he doesn’t love us, but I think we need to be real: Kendrick, like most black men, show black women love on their terms. Not ours,” Aurielle adds.

Although the two did not originally see eye to eye on the topic at hand, it is clear to see that there is enough respect for one another just as a black man and a black woman deep down to understand the other’s plight that somehow finds a common ground for them to stand upon.

They also agree that the song went bananas.

Let the church say amen.