Billie Eilish receives backlash for saying a lot of people in hip-hop are "lying"
5 February 2020, 12:04
"Why can’t y’all just make your whisper music and then shut the fuck up?"
Billie Eilish is being criticised for comments she has made on hip-hop music in a new interview with Vogue. The Grammy-winning singer said that there's a lot of "lying" in rap music, specifically about guns and women.
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"Just because the story isn’t real doesn’t mean it can’t be important. There's a difference between lying in a song and writing a story," she explained. "There are tons of songs where people are just lying. There's a lot of that in rap right now, from people that I know who rap. It’s like, 'I got my AK-47, and I’m fuckin…,' and I’m like, what? You don’t have a gun. 'And all my bitches…' I’m like, which bitches? That’s posturing, and that’s not what I’m doing."
Some have a problem with Billie's comments because she is critiquing a genre that she has partly built her aesthetic and sound on. Others compared her to Miley Cyrus, who famously profited from hip-hop in her Bangerz era, before trashing it a few years later.
Needless to say, the internet is not impressed.
Hip hop seems to be easy targets for aloooootttt of mfs who “borrow” EVERYTHING from the genre INCLUDING the aesthetic. Lol.
— House of Xpression (@AdrianXpression) February 4, 2020
Why can’t y’all just make your whisper music and then shut the fuck up? https://t.co/TOtEPbY41Z
crazy she talkin like this when she be dressin like she thugnificent https://t.co/biRBT66aUE
— mu'minfromtheblock (@risemumin) February 4, 2020
-uses hip hop-influenced music to become famous
— p.e. moskowitz (@_pem_pem) February 4, 2020
-takes the aesthetic of hip hop to become a fashion icon
-shits on hip hop
the normal white woman pop career path. miley did the same thing. https://t.co/6kIXk1nTwU
this — spouting facile critiques of music by black people — is easily my least favorite stage in the life cycle of an industry plant https://t.co/6FEwjT0pAT
— Noah Hurowitz (@NoahHurowitz) February 4, 2020
I might have been in grade 6 the first time I heard a white person make this criticism of hip hop https://t.co/0AVEyp6CcT
— Andray (@andraydomise) February 4, 2020
white alternative girls love being like “ugh rap is all abt posturing 🥱 i’m REAL” whole time their entire image hinges on shedding their suburban background to be “edgy” https://t.co/NRgi4Nacjq
— mariam (@skintinty) February 4, 2020
we regret to inform you that billie eilish is a boomer https://t.co/9nHmdOUSiO
— Joe (@stopjoenow) February 4, 2020
https://t.co/xxAcccaV1u pic.twitter.com/RgvUqFod1s
— Marley • 🥀❤ (@marleytargaryen) February 4, 2020
However, some did agree with what Billie said.
She’s 100 percent right. Soooo many people rap about guns that do not know about that shit..at all
— Warm Mcdonalds (@mischeif_kma) February 4, 2020
Is she wrong though?
— Mbune (@Jubhamba) February 4, 2020
she mostly listens to hip hop and credits rappers all the time for inspiring her, is friends with a lot of them, here she’s talking about SOME stuff in hip hop not ALL of it, stop saying shit if you don’t know what you’re talking about
— Zila (@idontexistirl) February 5, 2020
Billie hasn't responded to the backlash just yet but she did send a clear message to her haters on Instagram. Billie recently changed her Instagram bio twice, from "fuck y'all" to "not you guys, the rest of the internet".