In entertainment
Blaccents have been popular in American entertainment since the 1920s according to Bainbridge, who has pointed to the radio series Amos 'n' Andy , which featured white actors playing black characters, and Elvis Presley's success after his 1956 recording of the song "Hound Dog" as early examples of blaccents in American media. [1] Author Carvell Wallace wrote in 2016 that blaccents were "so deeply woven into rock history that we usually don't notice it", citing Presley, Roger Daltrey, Mick Jagger, Janis Joplin, Joe Cocker, and Sting as examples. [7] For Vulture , Lauren Michele Jackson also wrote that blaccents "apart from the actual speech patterns of black people" have been used "since America had a theater tradition to call its own". [8] [5]
In 2015, rapper Eve used the term "blaccent" to describe the rapping voice of Iggy Azalea, a white Australian rapper. [9] The term "blaccent" was later used frequently in reference to Azalea's rapping style. [10] [11] A 2015 assessment of Azalea's discography by linguists Maeve Eberhardt and Kara Freeman published in the Journal of Sociolinguistics concluded that Azalea's success due to the "overzealous" use of AAVE in her music, including through a more frequent lack of copula in her music than other black rappers and her use of the monophthongal ai, was reliant on appropriation and white privilege. [12] [13] Kristen S. He of Vice wrote in 2017 that Azalea had "conditioned us to hear blaccents as both inauthentic and offensive". [14]
Bhad Bhabie first rose to fame due to her blaccent on a viral 2016 episode of the talk show Dr. Phil and for her saying the phrase, "Catch me outside, how 'bout that?" [14] A 2016 MTV.com op-ed by Wallace accused Meghan Trainor of using a blaccent on her song "No", with Sean L. Maloney writing for Nashville Scene the year prior that she "loves slathering her faux-Southern blaccent all over every song". [7] [15] Trainor later stated that her voice was derived from her father being "very soulful" and "think[ing] he's James Brown sometimes". [16] Social media users accused Ariana Grande of using a blaccent in a 2018 interview for Billboard , in which she described a photo of herself as a baby by saying, "Bitch, that's my cookie, that's my juice, okay? Carry on. Thank you, next." [17] [18] YouTuber Lilly Singh faced criticisms of cultural appropriation, partially based on her alleged use of a blaccent, in 2019. [19]
Awkwafina, an American actress and rapper of Asian descent, came under fire in the late 2010s and early 2020s for her alleged use of a blaccent in her comedy, her music, such as in her 2012 song "My Vag", and in her film roles, particularly her character of Peik Lin in the 2018 film Crazy Rich Asians , who uses aspects of AAVE such as the habitual be, and in Ocean's 8 . [1] [20] According to Jackson, Awkwafina's use of a blaccent in Crazy Rich Asians revitalized the use of the term itself in 2018, which had "hardly [been] seen since Iggy Azalea could claim song of the summer". [8] In a 2021 interview with Reuters about her blaccent, she stated that she was "open to the conversation" and that it was "a little bit multi-faceted and layered". [21] She also faced backlash that year due to a resurfaced interview with Vice about her refusal to do accents for a role, which Twitter users criticized as antithetical to her use of a blaccent. [22] [23] She tweeted an apology in 2022, attributing her "American identity" to her schoolmates as a child, the films and television shows she watched growing up, and her love of hip hop music. Critics and social media users criticized her statement as a non-apology apology for the blaccent and she soon announced her departure from Twitter. [2] [24] In 2023, Nardos Haile of Salon wrote that her blaccent was "thick" and "infamous" and jokingly called her a "blaccent queen". [25]
Other non-black celebrities also courted controversy for using blaccents in the early 2020s, including singer Olivia Rodrigo, actor Chet Hanks, and YouTuber Bretman Rock. [5] [26] [27] The 2020 film Zola stars Riley Keough as Stefani, a stripper who speaks in a blaccent. [3] Its director, Janicza Bravo, described the character's blaccent as intentionally making the character seem like "a minstrel". [28] In Britney Spears's 2023 memoir The Woman in Me , she described an instance in which her ex-boyfriend, Justin Timberlake, spoke in a blaccent to singer Ginuwine by saying "fo shiz" and calling him his "homie". A clip of Michelle Williams reading the passage for the audiobook version of the memoir went viral online soon after its release and sparked discussions online about the use of blaccents for commercial gain. [25]
Comedian Matt Rife was described, both by Vox in 2023 and by McWhorter for The New York Times in 2024, as using a blaccent in several of his stand-up comedy routines. [6] [29]