Atlanta-based neo-soulster and vegan muffin man Raury created quite a stir over the weekend when he interrupted a Dolce & Gabbana fashion show that he was walking in to protest the brand. The rapper was one of many influential millennials that the brand had tagged to walk in their show, but they didn’t count on him knowing how to Google. After the “NEVERALONE” singer found out about the brand’s decision to dress Melania Trump and their tongue-in-cheek reaction to the outcry, he made the decision to protest at the show.
As you can see, Raury whipped off his D&G hoodie during the ending of the show to reveal slogans written on his body. In a new interview with GQ, he explained exactly why he decided to make a scene at his first-ever fashion show. At issue were the $250 “Boycott Dolce & Gabbana” shirts that the fashion house made in response to outcry over their support for Melania Trump.
“The ‘Boycott Dolce & Gabbana’ T-shirt they created completely makes a mockery of what ‘boycotting’ is,” he said. “Boycotting is the people’s voice. A protest is the people’s voice. It has power. It changes things.”
Raury told the magazine that he had no idea about the winking campaign until he’d already landed in Milan.
“I knew nothing about the T-shirt until I was here,” he said. “I had already agreed to walk for them. [The day before the show,] I Googled ‘Dolce & Gabbana’ so that I could know who was who when I finally met them. I didn’t want to be disrespectful to either one of them by calling them the wrong name. When I typed up their names, the first thing I saw was a headline [on the t-shirt]. And then I saw a commercial featuring the boycott T-shirt, and it looked playful and lighthearted—it was a joke. It was a troll.”
Raury said that he felt strongly about the t-shirts because of where he’s from.
“Me, as a young man from Stone Mountain, Georgia, the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan, I really felt this mockery of boycotting,” he said. “Who knows, if boycotts didn’t happen, if Rosa Parks and M.L.K. didn’t step up…who knows if I would even exist. Boycotting matters. Boycotting is real. Dolce’s entire campaign says it’s not real.”
He added that he viewed D&G’s Trump support and subsequent campaign as a calling out of the millennials that they were using in the show.
“Was it a test to see if millennials weren’t about sh*t? he said. “I felt like if nothing happened, then they would be right. And that T-shirt would be right. Dolce would think they can talk shit about people boycotting, support the first lady of a president who is very parallel to Hitler, and bring the millennials and put them in that shit and nothing would happen. But it’s basic math. One plus two equals three. And this is what will always happen.”
Check out the whole interview over at GQ.
