On March 30, 2017, Kendrick Lamar dropped “Humble”, a really decent diss track, something we needed. I’m a major rap fan so I was really geeked! As I was listening to the bars, I started to more excited for his new album. I just want to see if The Heart Pt. 4 could top To Pimp A Butterfly. Naturally, I looked on Twitter to see what everyone was saying about “Humble”. It appeared that Black Twitter was just as excited as me. I saw a lot of tweets about Kendrick coming for everybody and it being over for other rappers when his album dropped. Then people started watching the video closely…
All of a sudden I saw the energy change. The visual for “Humble” was done by David Myers, and when I first saw it I thought it was amazing. Not as visually stimulating as the video for “Alright“, but still I thought it was pretty dope. However, one moment, in particular, served as a point of controversy. At one point Kendrick raps “I am so fu**ing tired of the photoshop, show me something natural like afro on Richard Pryor.” Not bad right? But the woman on the screen doesn’t have a kinky or “nappy” short afro like the one on Richard Pryor, but rather she has a really loose curl pattern. This is where it gets a little messy.
My own personal opinion is that your visual should be consistent with what you’re rapping about. And I believe that should apply to everything: women, cars, location, etc. Like if you’re rapping about driving a Ferrari in Los Angeles don’t be in your music video driving a Benz in Chicago. It doesn’t make sense. For me, it all goes back to the saying “practice what you preach”.
A lot of the anger I saw about this part of the video was aligned with what I just said; some women didn’t feel like the woman used was the “right” woman because her hair didn’t mirror the hair pattern Kendrick was rapping about. However, the criticism went a little further when people started to say that Kendrick was playing into the hands of eurocentric beauty standards by having a woman with fairer skin and long hair in the video instead of a dark skin woman with an afro like Pryor. Also, the only dark-skinned woman in the video was shown when talking about asses with stretch marks, and her face wasn’t even shown. From that criticism stemmed the talk about that woman not being “black enough” for the part.
I have mixed feelings on the matter. Because again, I do agree that Kendrick should have hired a woman that had the characteristics he was talking about. I just thought it was weird that he decided not to. Also, I agree that it was bogus of him not to show the dark-skinned woman’s face but show the face of the lighter-skinned woman. It was definitely appropriate to call him out. As a darker-skinned woman myself, I do understand the anger being directed at Kendrick, but I don’t believe that it’s fair to say that woman is not “black enough.” Light-skinned black women are still black at the end of the day. But dark skin women aren’t the only ones at fault here. The light skin/dark skin debate has been around since slavery, and I think a lot of the anger on behalf of dark-skinned women comes from light-skinned women not always acknowledging the fact that dark skin is not valued as much as light skin in society. Sometimes it seems like people try to erase the issue by saying we’re all black. And while I do, I agree that we are all black. I also know that there’s a hierarchy and a privilege in terms of blackness. The lighter you are, the longer your hair is, and the more slender your nose is the better you’re treated. It’s hard for women like me with darker skin, shorter kinky hair, and wide noses to grow up knowing that the outside world doesn’t really believe that you’re beautiful. Dark-skinned women have a different cross to bear, and once that is acknowledged by everyone, black men and white people included, the healing within our community can truly begin.
To put it simply, Kendrick did throw some salt on open wounds, and while we do have a right to be mad and drag him real quick for perpetuating these bogus standards, he wasn’t the person who cut us in the first place. Black women, we have to stay focused. Our problem lies with the eurocentric beauty standards and this preference for whiteness, not Kendrick or light-skinned women themselves. All we’re doing when turning against each other is making the white people that created these standards happy. They don’t want to see us united. As black women, we have to be a thousand times better than everyone else to get half as much as everyone else. It’s easier for us to work together than against each other. Remember, black women are the only ones supporting black women 1000%. F*ck the light skin dark skin debate, and definitely f*ck these eurocentric beauty standards, we’re beautiful. Pay another black woman a compliment today. WE ARE BLACK GIRL MAGIC!
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