White Rappers and Hip-Hop

White rappers in Hip-Hop is nothing new, there's the Beastie Boys, Eminem and Mac Miller to name a few. What many of these rappers don't realize is the amount of white privilege they have even when participating in black art form. Hip-Hip has been and continues to be used as a means for rappers to talk about oppression many black people have to face and deal with daily. As more white rappers are now making it mainstream (Iggy Azalea, Brooke Candy ad Macklemore) headlines along the lines of 'Hip-Hop is dominated by White Rappers' only reflects the ignorance of the writers when it comes to issues like race, white privilege and cultural appropriation.

Sourc: UnfairCampaign.org

It is one thing for these rapper to want to be accepted into the Hip-Hop community as admirers and participators of the genre and is another thing to exploit and bastardize Hip-Hop and black culture. Eminem has white privilege as a white rapper in a black-dominated genre and art form in America. At one point he wrote a song about how much he hates black women. Sure he did apologize but the irony is still there; he rapped about hating black women, using an art form created by black people, and is used by black women. Yes, crap on black women because racism, and anti-blackness wasn't enough without some misogyny.

Iggy Azalea has been gaining popularity lately, the Australian rapper recently released a song with Ariana Grande. I have a lot of issues with her, she is essentially a caricature of what people think black women and black culture is. Have you ever listened to how she talks when she's not rapping and when she does? She "adopts" a "black accent" that sounds nothing like how how she usually talks. Sure rappers don't have to talk and rap the same way, but does a non-black rapper have to adopt vocal blackface... no they don't. To make matters worse in her music videos she uses black people as props, they have no purpose other than to be used as accessories and are there for show. She claimed a dance that was never hers to begin with. She stated that Miley Cyrus "stole" twerking from her when they both exploit the dance form to seem more black. Not to mention that twerking is a dance form that is seen across a myriad of black cultures around the world and has been a cultural dance for years. This is nothing new, as white people have always claimed things that was never theirs.

Black music has been appropriated from black culture for years, it's been done with rock n' roll, jazz, folk, country, gospel and is now happening with Hip-Hop and Rap music. Aspects of black culture has been stolen from black people for centuries. Black culture is stigmatized and put down by many; even non-black people who participate in it. Anti-blackness is worldwide and it's very real, so why are people attracted to black culture? It's simple, they like the things black people create, invent, our style, and aesthetic but they don't like black people.