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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.
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
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".