Katy Perry has had a troubled lead up to her new album Witness. She’s been plagued with controversy and that’s taken away a lot of the attention from her actual music and forced Katy to answer a ton of questions about everything else going around her. During her livestream of her entire weekend to promote Witness, Katy sat down with famed Black Lives Matter activist Deray Mckesson to discuss a topic that has long been attached to her and her career: cultural appropriation.
Katy pleaded ignorance to much of the controversy that has bitten her over perceived appropriation in her career, and openly admitted that she both benefits from white privilege and is guilty of appropriation.
“I listened and I heard and I didn’t know,” she said. “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.”
One of the most prominent examples was Katy eating watermelon and wearing cornrows in the “This Is How We Do” video back in 2014. Katy said it wasn’t until a friend educated her that she truly understood how impactful that statement and imagery was.
“She told me about the power in black women’s hair and how beautiful it is and the struggle,” Perry said. “I didn’t know that I did it wrong until I heard people saying that I did it wrong. It takes someone to say, out of compassion, out of love, ‘Hey, this is what the origin is.'”
Katy said that was a turning point, being approached in different matter, not with just anger but compassion. “It’s hard to hear those clap backs sometimes,” she said. “Your ego just wants to turn from them.”
She spoke more about the issues, and admitted “I have lots of white privilege.” Finally, she said she wants the segregation of the industry to end and for everybody to co-exist, regardless of race. “I don’t want to live in a segregated world, especially in music. I’ve been able to collaborate with Kanye West, Nicki Minaj, Juicy J, Migos. How can I collaborate with people and lift them up and give them that spotlight. How can I lift them up in a way that’s good.”
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She keeps hot sauce in her purse.
Oh shut everyone. Isn’t imitation a form of flattery. Go to
Did you have a stroke?
And you guys can’t figure out why you lost the election?
Lolz
I get it, people feel like it’s unfair for someone to use their culture without “earning it” by living the other aspects of the life, but isn’t the whole point of America everyone can enjoy everyone’s culture? Are Italians the only ones that get to eat pizza? The only way we are ever going to come together is if we all start to meld.
Problem with yoyr line ofnthinking is that races religions and ideologies DO own their culture. From fashion to food to music to daily rituals. Further more, appropriation is akin to plagirism and around the world but especially America, african American culture has been demonized and then robbed blind. Her ignorance of the origin of a frankly racist image shows why she got so much backlash. When Beyonce or Remy Ma wear cornrows or braids, its considered manly, thuggish, ugly. Switch to The jenner sisters and its trendy, “new”, in style.
Noone is sayong you cant emerse yourself in any culture. I love having hip hop related conversations with all creeds who grasp the whole idea of where hip hop came from, how it evolved from poetry and jazz etc,. What her, Miley Cyrus, the Kardashians, etc etc do is simply dip their toes in the shallow end, pick and choose what they want but NEVER learn what it really means, and worse when people start to question why and what, the have a safe space to retreat to. I cant turn off my blackness.
No one owns culture. Culture is something that evolves over time and changes with each passing generation. No one person or race can claim they invented a certain culture or own a certain aspect within a culture because that culture was built upon others before them who built upon others before them.
Its like saying jazz is music for black people only, because black people invented it. But it’s not like jazz was created in a vacuum where the “inventor” never heard of the concept if music before. No he built on that music from someone before him, who built it on from someone before him and before him until you get to some caveman banging a bone on a rock. And in no way woukf it be appropriate to tell someone in that line that what they are doing is wrong because they will never understand the hardships of those before. In a way cultural appropriation has been something that we have been doing forever, and it is the only way we can progress as a cultural. Or else we’d all just be banging a bone on a rock
i would love to see you carve a totem pole while reciting this trash.
How is it that you cannot see the merit of the fact that all human experience is borrowed, not necessarily unique. Someone who thinks they started a genre is unquestionably mistaken. Nothing is new under the sun.
@jonsteel thank you for contributing to the discussion. Your comment was thought provoking and opened my eyes
“She told me about the power in black women’s hair”
Lolz
Its like a tagline for Soul-Glow.
Yooo her untalented ass with a fake ass apology drumming up some promo for her album at least if u gonna take have some talent lol
Uproxx is infested with racism and ignorance. Burn it down. May god have mercy on your souls.
the thing that always bothered me about people complaining about cultural appropriation is that it pigeon holes people by the colour of their skin. oh youre white, you have to have these types of hairstyles and can only write country music or something. oh youre black, you have to have curly hair and listen to rap music. it seems like the more we become pc and aware of cultural sensitivity, the more we tend to distance ourselves because we’re afraid to share space, share ideas, share style, personalities etc. I would hope that sometime in my lifetime we could all just stfu and be friends.
unpopular black opinion time….neither katy perry or miley bothered me at all with their “hip hop” experiences…most of this shit is pop music once the industry got its hooks in it and this is very much a collaboration everytime. katy did a song with kanye, taylor swift had a huge single with kendrick….migos agreed to this. if it was some egregious culture jacking or whatever, why do we always have to be the one co-signing it. no one forced migos to do the song, but it was a give n take. they take the bag for the feature, and get to perform the song to people that dont know shit, and katy, well katy gets a migos feature and social media backlash. i dont care about pop music or its white girls collaborating with hip hop. she didnt steal shit…she visited made a shitty song and will prolly go back to making dumb pop music. what battle is all this “social media reading” fighting when at the end of the day the gears are gonna keep moving and hip hop is still gonna be as “pure” as it always was. i really didnt need her fake apology, and i dont need black twitter stomping its feet when white people do the white people thing by being corny. now if katy dropped a rap album on her solo and the media called it authentic, i’d take notice…but a corny white girl doing dumb corny white girl shit…ignore. but em got his nigger pass years ago cuz he got skill, tho he admitted to using his whiteness to be famous. everything these people do in relation to our culture doesnt make the real culture any less unique and dope. stop giving those people THAT much power. i could give 2 fucks bout the kardasians and what they sell to other people, cuz i hope black folks are and will continue to support the black creators who are they true artists. they dont need ur twitter outrage, they need ur money. but im a stupid out of touch nobody on a site that been lost its soul, who the fuck cares.
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