{"id":1208820,"date":"2025-02-17T01:40:07","date_gmt":"2025-02-17T01:40:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/?p=1208820"},"modified":"2025-02-17T01:40:07","modified_gmt":"2025-02-17T01:40:07","slug":"lets-stop-using-racist-coded-language-to-discuss-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/lets-stop-using-racist-coded-language-to-discuss-music\/","title":{"rendered":"Let\u2019s Stop Using Racist Coded Language to Discuss Music"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\n\tLate last year, The Cut\u2019s Cat Zhang ran an explainer<\/a> on the word \u201ckhia\u201d \u2014 a phrase that exploded in popularity online as longtime left-of-center artists (Chappell Roan<\/a>, Tinashe<\/a>, Charli XCX<\/a>, etc.) had major mainstream moments after years of build-up and fan anticipation. As host of music<\/a> podcast Pop Pantheon DJ Louie XIV relays in Zhang\u2019s piece, \u201cA \u2018khia\u2019 is a pop girl who people talk about, but who no one seems to care about culturally.\u201d This definition works: It specifies the group of performers most likely to be hounded with the term (women in popular music), and its focus on cultural conversation nods to \u201ckhia\u201d being a status that an artist can shift in and out of.<\/p>\n

\n\tOut of \u201ckhia\u201d spawned the \u201ckhia asylum,\u201d a figurative purgatory for pop girls who are lighting up neither the charts nor social media timelines. Their albums get greeted with limited fanfare and only their most dedicated stans seem to care about anything they\u2019re doing. But artists aren\u2019t locked in the \u201ckhia asylum\u201d forever. With the right single or era, an artist can escape the khia asylum they\u2019re supposedly stuck in, like Charli (Brat) and Tinashe (\u201cNasty\u201d) did last year. Nonetheless, an underperforming album or run of singles can render even seemingly infallible artists to the khia asylum \u2013 like, say, post-Radical Optimism Dua Lipa<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tZhang\u2019s explainer is a great snapshot of the zaniness of online communities built on the constant dissection of pop culture, but it unfortunately belies the racist roots of how terms like \u201ckhia\u201d come to be, and who and what they\u2019re now most used to describe. \u201cKhia\u201d was first levied as an insult online back in 2014; Nicki Minaj stan accounts sneered<\/a> at a fan\u2019s overwhelmed reaction to meeting the real-life Khia herself. In the years that followed, the tweet became more of a meme than the individual term \u201ckhia,\u201d but that started to change last year \u2013 especially as debates over the merits of different kinds of hip-hop dominated mainstream discourse.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cKhia\u201d isn\u2019t just a random word, though \u2014 it\u2019s the first given name of Billboard-charting rapper Khia, most famous for her 2002 Billboard Hot 100<\/a>-charting cult classic \u201cMy Neck, My Back\u201d (No. 42) and her 2006 \u201cSo Excited\u201d collaboration with Janet Jackson (No. 90). According to Luminate, \u201cMy Neck, My Back\u201d has earned over 217.9 million official on-demand U.S. streams, while its parent album, the RIAA Gold-certified Thug Misses, has shifted over 618,000 U.S. album sales and reached No. 33 on the Billboard 200<\/a>. But the numbers are the least interesting thing about Khia and \u201cMy Neck, My Back.\u201d Her infectious flow and effusive lyrical ode to cunnilingus and anilingus are key building blocks for the p\u2014y rap subgenre; she and her music have served as an enduring reference point for some of the biggest female rappers of this current class.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 2017, two-time Grammy-nominated rapper Saweetie<\/a> freestyled over \u201cMy Neck\u201d for her debut single, \u201cIcy Girl,\u201d which eventually reached No. 16 on Rhythmic Airplay. The same year, Miami rap duo City Girls<\/a> called on Khia\u2019s classic for their own debut single, \u201cF\u2013k Dat N\u2014a,\u201d which later served as the fifth single from Quality Control\u2019s Control the Streets, Volume 1 compilation. During this year\u2019s Grammy telecast (Feb. 2), Dove aired a commercial<\/a> soundtracked by a remake of \u201cMy Neck\u201d courtesy of Grammy-nominated rapper Chika<\/a>. In the past decade, the song\u2019s influence has even stretched outside of hip-hop, with artists like Miley Cyrus<\/a> and Elle King<\/a> delivering covers of the X-rated anthem. Many artists dream of putting out just one song that achieves a fraction of the commercial success and cultural resonance of \u201cMy Neck, My Back\u201d \u2014 and yet the name of the artist behind that very song has now become synonymous with being an act of little to no viability or significance. (A representative for Khia did not respond to Billboard\u2018s request for comment at the time of publication.)<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s not right. Knowing how sinister this industry can be to Black female artists, it\u2019s wholly disrespectful to condense Khia\u2019s career and impact into a euphemism for flopping. Not only is she an artist who\u2019s greatly contributed to her genre and left an undeniable legacy, but she\u2019s also a person. And that\u2019s her real birth name, by the way. To strip her name from her and contort it into a term that is most often used to degrade artists who look like her is simply dehumanizing. The fact that so many users weren\u2019t even hip to the correct pronunciation<\/a> of her name says it all.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cKhia\u201d isn\u2019t the only problematic term that\u2019s recently gained popularity online. Some of these phrases have been percolating for years, but they\u2019ve started popping up more frequently in the wake of Lamar\u2019s triumph over Drake last year and Doechii\u2019s Alligator Bites Never Heal-fueled mainstream rise. Throughout their careers, both Lamar and Doechii \u2013 former and current TDE affiliates, respectively \u2013 have been vocal about their deep love and respect for the roots of hip-hop and the importance of protecting its sanctity. Inside and outside of their music, they, for many, exemplify the essence of hip-hop for later generations.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn \u201cMan at the Garden\u201d (No. 9), a Hot 100 top 10 hit from his late 2024 surprise album GNX, Lamar soliloquizes, \u201cHow annoying, does it angers me to know the lames can speak\/ On the origins of the game I breathe? That\u2019s insane to me.\u201d Last year, Doechii \u2013 after smartly introducing her mixtape with a single that uses boom bap to call out the hypocrisy of male rap gatekeepers and fans \u2013 wrote on X: \u201cDon\u2019t let these people brainwash you into disconnecting from the soul of hip hop by convincing you it isn\u2019t cool or it\u2019s \u2018too deep.\u2019\u201d Nonetheless, in recent months, their mutual conscientiousness \u2013 and use of explicitly Black genres like jazz and boom bap \u2014 has been perceived as being condescending, preachy and just plain unfun, giving way to the continued use of insulting terms meant to specifically disparage their devotion to hip-hop traditions.<\/p>\n

\n\tOne of the more unfortunate things about discussing anything online this deep in the Internet Age is that everything gets flattened. And that really sucks for our more dynamic artists. Through the beef, Lamar became generally representative of traditional, lyricism-centered hip-hop, while Drake became the poster child for more fun, danceable, easily digestible tunes. Of course, the full scope of both of their catalogs is far more nuanced, but both rappers played into those perceptions during their beef.
\u201cEuphoria\u201d finds Lamar promising Drake, \u201cKeep makin\u2019 me dance, wavin\u2019 my hand, and it won\u2019t be no threat,\u201d and in \u201cFamily Matters,\u201d Drizzy describes K.Dot\u2019s style as, \u201cAlways rappin\u2019 like you \u2019bout to get the slaves freed.\u201d That \u201cFamily Matters\u201d line, in part, gave way to the increased use of another gross term \u2013 this time, one used to describe music that embodies the foundational spirit of hip-hop.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI can\u2019t get behind that slave music Kendrick make,\u201d one user wrote<\/a> on X three days after GNX \u2013 widely considered to be the Compton rapper\u2019s least conceptual LP \u2013 dropped. When Lamar released \u201cWatch the Party Die,\u201d his first post-\u201cNot Like Us\u201d song, on Instagram, another user facetiously posted<\/a>, \u201cWhat was Kendrick talking about in that diss ion feel like listening to slave music right now\u2026\u201d Because Kendrick explored the cross-generational and cross-cultural impact of slavery on records like 2015\u2019s To Pimp a Butterfly, suddenly all of his music was \u201cslave music.\u201d Butterfly also houses the Grammy-winning \u201cAlright,\u201d one of the biggest protest anthems of the Black Lives Matter era; in one X post<\/a> that\u2019s been viewed over 20.5 million times a user dismissed Kendrick\u2019s entirely catalog on the basis of that song, writing, \u201cDrake held us down for 15 summers and [y\u2019all] turned on him for a guy that make protest music.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter Doechii went viral for a self-choreographed Late Show<\/a> performance of \u201cDenial Is a River\u201d and \u201cBoiled Peanuts,\u201d another user wrote<\/a>, \u201cMaking [that] Harriet Tubman music is the cheat code to getting respected in rap.\u201d That post \u2013 which racked up over 8.4 million views \u2014 caused such a fracas that even Ebro Darden, host of Apple Music\u2019s Rap Life podcast, commented<\/a>: \u201cWhen you get into uplifting Black people\u2026 don\u2019t we continue to be reminded that [the mainstream] don\u2019t want that from Black people \u2013 specifically in hip-hop? And then [people are] calling it \u2018Harriet Tubman rap,\u2019 like, what? [That sector of the world] exists but allowing that to shape our conversations around what we as hip-hop deem to be spectacular\u2026 we\u2019re playing ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThere are plenty of other terms like these entering too-common usage: \u201cplantation tunes,\u201d \u201cNegro spiritual music,\u201d \u201cMufasa music,\u201d \u201ctwerk slay mama music<\/a>,\u201d etc. At the top of the new year, an X fan account wrote, \u201cWatching Doechii become a shea butter artist is actually sad\u201d; here, the term \u201cshea butter\u201d is a dog whistle for Black Americans in online circles. Some of these terms spawned from intracommunal discussions that spilled over into general online conversation, and others are likely to have been pushed by bot accounts \u2013 often specifically targeting dark-skinned Black artists. None of them are helpful or interesting descriptors for music, and all of them are disrespectful to Black history.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt is absolutely disgusting to invoke Harriet Tubman\u2019s name or anything related to the Transatlantic slave trade as a way to disregard and denigrate Black artists and their work. One of the gravest sins in human history, the centuries of death, rape, cannibalism, subjugation, exploitation and discrimination of Black people by way of the slave trade and its heinous offspring are horrors that we will never completely understand. Those ancestors are to be venerated and eternally respected, not used as shorthand for the disparagement of their descendants\u2019 art, which often explicitly exalts their history.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe first couplet of Alligator Bites is \u201cLet\u2019s start the story backwards\/ I\u2019m dead, she\u2019s dead, just another Black Lives Mattered\u201d; by track three, Doechii\u2019s naming songs after boiled peanuts, a popular snack in the Southern U.S. brought to the region via enslaved Black people from West Africa. People often point to Butterfly as Lamar\u2019s opus in terms of sociopolitical commentary, but we can also just give GNX\u2019s \u201cReincarnated\u201d a spin: Over a sample of 2Pac\u2019s \u201cMade N\u2014az,\u201d Lamar connects the lives and stories of (presumably) blues singer-songwriter and guitarist John Lee Hooker, a Billie Holiday-esque Chitlin Circuit character, Lucifer and himself. History and legacy drive key aspects of both Lamar and Doechii\u2019s recent releases; it\u2019s particularly sinister and sickening to flip those artistic choices as ploys for approval from white critics and awards bodies.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd let\u2019s say either artist really was making music informed by work songs and Negro spirituals. What\u2019s wrong with that? Why is that a bad thing \u2014 especially when those songs provided the foundation for the evolution of American music in the centuries that followed? All these terms do is reduce Black experiences into inaccurate archetypes and further devalue the Black roots of countless genres. And once it became fair game to make light of slavery, it became easier to introduce more of these bits of coded language into contemporary discourse.<\/p>\n

\n\tA Pitchfork<\/a> review of In Pieces, Chl\u00f6e<\/a>\u2019s 2023 debut solo album, described \u201cHave Mercy,\u201d her debut solo single, as \u201ca song from the Empire soundtrack\u2026 something Lucious Lyon would come up with.\u201d From that point, \u201cEmpire music\u201d became a popular online term to describe Chl\u00f6e\u2019s sound \u2013 which largely comprises of the same uptempo R&B-pop tracks people endlessly moan and groan for across social media. If \u201cEmpire music\u201d was code for dismissing uptempo contemporary R&B from Black female artists, \u201clash tech music<\/a>\u201d was code for dismissing its downtempo counterpart. People have used the term to describe music from Summer Walker<\/a>, Jhen\u00e9 Aiko<\/a>, Chl\u00f6e<\/a>, and even Skilla Baby\u2019s<\/a> songs dedicated to his female fanbase.<\/p>\n

\n\tGranted, both of these terms primarily originated in Black circles. A Black writer reviewed In Pieces for Pitchfork, and a lot of Black lash techs really did listen to a lot of Summer Walke<\/a>r and the like. The issue is that there are no real community boundaries in online discourse \u2013 particularly on platforms like X (formerly Twitter) \u2013 so non-Black users then adopt these phrases (often hiding behind profile pictures of Black celebrities or fictional characters) with an incomplete understanding of the irony and humor Black people use amongst themselves. \u201cEmpire music\u201d and \u201clash tech music\u201d became outright pejoratives instead of unserious inside jokes.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe \u201cEmpire music\u201d phenomenon is particularly interesting \u2013 because the show spawned legitimate Billboard hits. The first season\u2019s soundtrack peaked atop the Billboard 200 and a handful of its songs landed on the Hot 100, including the Estelle<\/a>-assisted \u201cConqueror\u201d at No. 42. The soundtrack even finished at No. 9 on Billboard\u2019s 2015 Year-End Top R&B\/Hip-Hop Albums ranking. And while the music wasn\u2019t necessarily paradigm-shifting and made for TV \u2013 which is arguably the real joke of the \u201cEmpire music\u201d quip \u2014 it clearly connected with audiences. Once users unfamiliar with Empire\u2019s cultural cachet got a hold of the term, the irony and humor were permanently replaced by disdain disproportionately geared toward Black women in R&B and pop. The term became an additional tool of limitation in an industry that goes out of its way to obstruct Black women\u2019s potential.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn response to an X user\u2019s New Year\u2019s wish for \u201cmore uptempo R&B\u201d in 2025, rising pop star Jae Stephens wrote<\/a> \u201cNo one will do it [because] everyone\u2019s quick to label it \u2018empire\/star music!\u2019\u201d It\u2019s heartbreaking to read those words from a burgeoning Black pop star, especially when a white pop girl like Tate McRae<\/a> can drop uptempo R&B-inflected pop bangers and be hailed<\/a> as Top 40\u2019s next messiah by the very same crowds that will write off Black pop girls with the aforementioned dog whistles.<\/p>\n

\n\tLast year, we watched the CMAs completely ignore<\/a> Cowboy Carter while celebrating F-1 Trillion, Post Malone\u2019s<\/a> country crossover album from the same year. We saw, at the highest level, how Black artists \u2013 and Black women, in particular \u2013 are denied the ability to move through genres as freely as their white peers. Chl\u00f6e, whose music traverses a range of genres, touched on this in a Nylon<\/a> cover story last year as well. \u201cAny music I do will easily and quickly be categorized as R&B because I\u2019m a Black woman,\u201d she said. \u201cIf someone who didn\u2019t have my skin tone made the same music, it would be in the pop categories.\u201d Why continue to use verbiage that not only disrespects their art, but also makes it harder for Black pop stars to break into and thrive in predominantly white top 40 spaces?<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was a wonderfully discombobulating experience reading this X post<\/a> from Stephens. \u201cGive a khia a chance,\u201d she wrote to Charli XCX in a post quoting Pop Crave\u2019s observation that \u201cHello Goodbye\u201d is the only Brat song without a remix. That wasn\u2019t the first<\/a> or last<\/a> time Stephens had used the term \u2013 and who can blame her? It\u2019s a popular term that\u2019ll help her visibility in the algorithm \u2013 but what does it say about the state of music, its business and accompanying discourse if we are at the point where a rising Black female pop star is using a term that bastardizes the given name of Black female rapper (even if ironically) in an attempt to gain more notoriety amongst pop listeners? It\u2019s easy to disregard these terms and discussion of their respective merits as \u201cchronically online,\u201d but how we discuss music and artists on the Internet has a direct impact on how we discuss them in real life, which, to a degree, then influences which artists the industry chooses to support.<\/p>\n

\n\tAbove all, \u201ckhia,\u201d \u201cslave trade music\u201d and the like are simply unintelligent ways to describe music. We deserve better and smarter conversation from ourselves \u2013 especially when we have so many Black and non-white mainstream artists putting out art that deserves genuine, thorough consideration and can\u2019t be easily summarized or dismissed with insulting and derogatory terms like these. We have access to far too much music history to settle for grounding our experiences and responses to music in such thinly veiled racist coded language.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.billboard.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n