Y’all Only Hate Miley Cyrus Because She Made The Smart Move

Onyx Contributor:  H.T. (@517NightHawk), Podcast:  Lansing Anti-Hero

In light of Miley Cyrus walking away from her very hip hop centric image from about a year ago, I have to put on my cape and explain why all this outrage towards her is, well, frankly bullshit.

First and foremost:  Y’ALL told her for YEARS to cut the shit with her Dundalk Chic (If you know why that’s funny, then I want to say thank you to all readers from Maryland) but when she listened and STOPPED…what?  Ya’ll got your wish.

Second:  let’s stop with this whole “white people are stealing our culture from us” and cries of cultural appropriation.  Hip hop & R&B were never stolen, but were rather sold to American pop culture.  Honestly, you wanna be mad at Justin Timberlake for abandoning Janet Jackson after the Super Bowl but later jumping on a track with her now dead brother, fine.  But let’s not act like JT isn’t talented.  Let’s not pretend that Miley Isn’t talented.  Let’s not pretend that the biggest names in hip hop & R&B didn’t also cross over YEARS ago.

And third:  let’s stop pretending hip hop artists who they themselves aren’t making it in hip hop haven’t shed said persona almost entirely.  Seriously, Ludacris, Will Smith, LL Cool J, Queen Latifah, Ice Cube, Ice-T, Eve.  Hell, even Mark Wahlberg managed to get past a failed rap career in the 90s to be a big name actor.  But the idea is that if you’re white and in any way a visible figure in hip hop, you’re supposed to forever live off it till the day you die or face being called a culture vulture.  And this is where I call bullshit.  As someone who lives within a subculture of a subculture (nerds), I can tell you that the people who tend to bitch the most about people exploiting our culture frankly sound irrational and I can’t really fathom what the alternative is.  What, stay in obscurity?

Face it, the problem y’all have is that Miley in her brief time with hip hop managed to do something that can be done by others, but because we’re the generation that likes to focus on how certain groups are marginalized by white people rather than standing up for ourselves, this is why Miley is the bad guy.

Seriously, hip hop isn’t even solely an American subculture anymore.  The UK, Korea, Japan, Mexico, the Caribbean, South America, even the Middle East have gotten in on hip hop.  But because millennial black folks wanna still have the mindset of every black kid who was raised in the suburbs who read the autobiography of Malcolm X & some Tumblr blog ran by a Williamsburg hipster that says black men are trash while dating some guy who looks like Paul Walker, this is where we are.

So in closing, let it go.  Miley Cyrus on the whole is kinda right that a lot of hip hop today is trash (though not all).  Face it, many of us when it comes to hip hop will grow out of it.  She just did it earlier.