Lorde is the stage name for a talented 16-year-old New Zealand singer whose sparse and catchy indie pop has gained her significant notoriety over the last couple of months. She is the youngest artist to top Billboard’s Hot 100 chart in 26 years, a feat made even more amazing by the fact that most girls her age are spending 4 hours a day on Instagram rather than creating anything new for the world.
Lorde’s chart-topping single “Royals” has primarily driven her rise to popularity. However, in a recent Feministing article, Veronica Bayetti Flores described the song as “deeply racist,” ascribing a hateful intent to the song’s lyrics that, to any reasonable person, simply poke fun at rap’s culture of excess. These are the “offensive” lyrics:
But every song’s like gold teeth, grey goose, trippin’ in the bathroom
Blood stains, ball gowns, trashin’ the hotel room,
We don’t care, we’re driving Cadillacs in our dreams.
But everybody’s like Cristal, Maybach, diamonds on your timepiece.
Jet planes, islands, tigers on a gold leash.
We don’t care, we aren’t caught up in your love affair.
As usual, priviledged American feminists are doing the eminently meaningful work of being offended on behalf of a group they aren’t even a part of. Veronica Bayetti Flores, a white and/or hispanic woman, writes for a major website but apparently does not even know the definition of racism:
Racism: noun: : A belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race
In the least charitable interpretation of Lorde’s lyrics, she is blasting the hip hop culture for embracing materialism and insisting that her own group (Females? New Zealanders? Indie pop artists?) are not trapped by such vices. It would be an incredible jump in logic to make even the flimsiest of arguments that she is citing her race’s superiority over another’s rather than simply criticizing the behavior of a particular group.
The author’s incoherent diatribe also ignores other parts of the lyrics that seem to reference stereotypically white excess — I can’t remember the last rap video I saw featuring “ball gowns” and “trashing hotel rooms” (a cliché for predominantly white rock-and-roll bands). Are these references racist as well? Most likely, that these are the words of a girl getting into an industry driven by appearances and citing the hypocrisy and ostentation therein.
Even if one ignores the dig at white stereotypes and insists that Lorde is solely criticizing the world of rap, why is it forbidden for a person to critique a culture that is steeped in excess and ostentation while the community that dominates its fanbase remains largely low in socioeconomic status and unable to create wealth? Have we reached a point where any criticism of a subset of a racial group is met with a reactionary branding as “racist” and shamed out of existence?
Other articles have highlighted the sheer solipsism and stupidity of an American feminist viewing the lyrics of a 16-year-old New Zealander through the eyes of American race relations, so I will not repeat that aspect here. I will point out, however, the hypocrisy that Feministing has condemned bullying of other groups but remains complicit in shaming a girl for purportedly racist song lyrics without any sense of nuance or perspective. Does it have anything to do with the fact that, as a young girl in a foreign country just starting out in an industry based largely on reputation and body of work, she makes an easy target? Who could be expected to jump in and defend a pretty white girl against cries of racism from American feminists wielding a self-declared broadsword of faux moral superiority?
In any case, Bayetti’s puerile and poorly conceived hit piece is proof that our level of discourse on race is rapidly decaying to a point of no return, and American feminists are complicit in accelerating the decline. A blanket description of any criticism as “racist” simply for shock value and page views implicitly restricts freedom of speech and degrades the dialogue about race into a space of feelings and “offense” rather than facts, logic, and reason. Then again, those ideals never really were the domain of American feminists anyway.
Read More: But You’re A Good Girl
This kind of vile bile will only help the western man to throw away the coat of guilt that is screwing up his life.
Guilt for what my grandfathers did? Fuck that, I am proud. They did way more good in one lifetime that thousand feminists can achieve in thousand years.
Even if western man has proven to be a docile imbecile in relations to feminists, and rayyyyyccciiissmm accusers, it also has a breaking point.
Now imagine you are Swedish male. Yes, male.
And you read that the feminists want to ban porn directed at white males.
Yes. Direct targeting of white Swedish males.
So, woman on woman ok.
White woman black man ok.
White woman green man, ok.
White woman donkey, ok.
White man white man ,ok.
Two men eating bananas of their asses, ok.
Any combination of men ok.
Any color combination ok.
White woman with any color combination ok.
White man with any color combination of female, banned. Criminal.
There has got to be a breaking point somewhere.
Do you have any links to articles about what’s going on in Sweden?
(This isn’t the usual “source?” comment. I want to know more.)
I got it from ChapinsInferno, but Heartiste posted a link
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=es&sl=sv&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.friatider.se%2Fung-vanster-vill-forbjuda-porr-men-bara-for-vita-man&sandbox=to
Wear it like a badge of honor and they cannot harm you with it.
What the fuck is wrong with Sweden?
WB
what a total cunt
“Now come on everybody let’s make cocaine cool
We need a few more half naked women up in the pool
And hold this mac-10 that’s all covered in jewels
And can you please put your titties closer to the 22’s
And where’s the champagne, we need champagne
Now look as hard as you can with this blunt in your hand
And know hold up your chain, slow motion through the flames
Now cue the smoke machines and the simulated rain”
See…it’s only cool when we black people do it. DUH!!!
Source:
It’s rapper Lupe Fiasco mocking hip-hop culture and videos… So, of course feminists attacked him for doing the exact same thing as Lorde….right?…
Ah, hypocritical feminists.
> […] and degrades the dialogue about race into a space of feelings and “offense” rather than facts, logic, and reason.
That’s basically what feminism is about.
Well, I guess when it comes to feminist diversity race relations; no Irish need apply.
Heard this song a couple of times, thought it was pretty g, apart from the parts about wanting to be queen, etc.. Who can blame a 16 year old girl for that, though?
Seems like she’s scared because the rejection of capitalism means that feminists start losing their tax payer fundage.
Also, it’s going to be interesting how her ideals change over the next couple years. Hopefully we don’t have another Miley
I think that fire-breathing feminista is just pissed off that Lorde is hot, and she is not.
Pretty standard girl-on-girl jealous antipathy.
Have you actually seen Lorde without all the makeup? She’s not hot.
I like the song though,
Sometimes things are relative:
http://tinyurl.com/koxecjb
But compared to feminists…
Fair enough. So let’s just say “more successful at garnering adulation”. Still creates jealousy.
yeah, ‘Royals’ is an incredibly beautiful song.
“Tennis Court” is also a lovely song. She’s a remarkably talented singer, and I hope she continues to make music for many years.
That’s just a childish thing to say.
https://gs1.wac.edgecastcdn.net/8019B6/data.tumblr.com/ddc303f46aa28f6accbee5cb6ffaae17/tumblr_inline_mus2b8YTW21raecg7.gif
Feminists scream RACISM whenever they can to cover up the fact that theirs is a white, middle-class female supremacist movement.
Every comment on that artocle disagreed totally with her and many were from feminists. Stop taking a vast movement and treating us all the same. I am a feminist and I thought it was absurd.
This is redicolous there really nothing racist in these lyrics
redicolous?
..
In America, a quick and easy way to become “popular” is to point out the “degeneracy” in the stereotypical African American “culture”. White Americans of all stripes, and even whites from other nations are incredibly hypocritical in this regard.
“We” African Americans are a direct reflection of the people who created us. Who on this planet is more materialistic than the average Western European/American citizen? The entire planet is being destroyed so that we can have our ‘American’ dream.
“Have we reached a point where any criticism of a subset of a racial group is met with a reactionary branding as “racist” and shamed out of existence?”
To ask the question is to answer it.
Okay, this person is actually being pretty silly. I didn’t even think of rap when I heard this song – I just thought she was talking about shallow, materialistic celebrity culture in general.
I Hope you all know that the definition of Feminism is equality of men and women. if a woman is acting as if she is better than a man, this is by definition sexism, not feminism.
And fems will tell men what their “equal” rights are, so SHUT THE FUCK UP!
Ya ever notice that the sales brochure contains language entirely different from that in the employee’s procedural manual?
I shall know the Scotsman by the sheep he raises.
OK, speaking as someone who actually lives in New Zealand, to us, and especially a 16 yr old girl, the American Race relations are not on our minds constantly. it doesnt come into our daily lives or concerns, we have our own race related issues to deal with. we don’t see Hip Hop music as representative of a specific race, just as a particular genre of music, like pop, country, House, electronica. It’s how people choose to express themselves. Lorde wasnt referring to these things as african american culture, but of ‘rich people’ culture.
ALSO the ‘us’ that Lorde was talking about, referred specifically to her own group of 16yr old friends, who are not rich, and so all the trappings, are totally un-relatable. It was not a race related thing at all.Just ridiculous when people who know nothing about the New Zealand culture make comments on it and our opinions of things as if we were American…..That’s the last thing we would want to be.
Good comment.
Amazing — a New Zealander (?) writes a song about differentiating herself and her cohort from American life, values and culture, and some dumb, self-absorbed American feminist interprets the song in terms of American life, values and culture.
Talk about missing the point, Ms. Bayeti-Flores!
Your research is wrong – one woman spoke out against the lyrics and she has widely been criticised by both men and women. The complaint came from a position of racial discrimination, not from a feeling of misogyny. If you search the the debate on google, it is primarily women who have come to Lourde’s defence. Feministing won’t have published an article on it as it is not in any way related to issues of feminism.
The quality of your comment might have been considerably improved had you read the original article and this one (which provides a link to the original) as well first.
never heard this track before…. respect to this GIRL !… seems like she took a bit of the red pill…. i think the point is not some silly feminist attacks against her… the point is HER!
she’s the last nail in the HIP-HOP coffin after Jay-Z’s dreadful Magna Carta
never heard this track before…. respect to this GIRL !… seems like she took a bit of the red pill…. i think the point is not some silly feminist attacks against her… the point is HER!
she’s the last nail in the HIP-HOP coffin after Jay-Z’s dreadful Magna Carta
HEY!!! Make sure you check in with your Godhead Poser Cunt RooshV who will tell you that feminism is EBIL as fuck but racism doesn’t exist. Certainly, all races are equal just as men and women are equal in all ways. If you can believe one digusting lie? Why not both, or any?
Even if we used the most ridiculous standards for racism, and this really was racist, what’s the big deal? Is anyone really offended by this?
If you say feminism got out of control you should see what’s going on in the black community. I know people like to vent online especially on Youtube and Tumblr but I have never in all my years of internet browsing seen such idiotic and misplaced accusations of racism. Everything is racist now. I once said Nicky Minaj is a dumb bitch on Tumblr and I got called names because I apparently hate a black woman for being herself. WTF??
Well said. This is insane. The song is not racist at all, and plenty of the things she described are more related to white people than black people anyway. It makes me so mad that anyone even had the time to analyze how “racist” this song was. We have bigger issues to deal with.
Feminist is about genders equality. I don’t see the rapport between being feminist and anti-racist.
Lorde did a remix of this with Rick Ross. If she was saying anything it’s that the world is infatuated with materialism.
Like rappers are the only ones with exotic animals, right Mr Pablo Escobar?