Just to clarify, I’ve never really been a huge fan of his music, but Post Malone is one of the biggest names in the music industry today. His music has accumulated over 1 billion views on YouTube, 50 millions monthly listeners on Spotify, and constantly sells out arenas across the globe. Although with his success, Austin Post on numerous occasions, has been labelled as a ‘culture vulture’ and that he culturally appropriates African-American and hip hop culture.
But what is Cultural Appropriation?
“Cultural appropriation refers to the ways people adopt or adapt an aspect of another’s culture and make it their own (Heyd, 2003; Hladki, 1994).” (Han, 2019). This is often considered a problem today as people believe “When the dominant group continues to steal aspects of the non-dominant culture, it continues the economic oppression and disadvantage of that culture.”(Reachout, 2019).
So why is Post Malone labelled a Culture Vulture and often accused of Culturally Appropriating?
When it comes to Post Malone, People often accuse him of culturally appropriating Hip-Hop culture. Post often receives this criticism for several reasons. Being a white american rapper who wears braids. He allegedly doesn’t invest anything back into the hip-hop community. But the most controversial being a statement he made during an interview with NewOnce “If you’re looking for lyrics, if you’re looking to cry, if you’re looking to think about life, don’t listen to hip-hop. There’s great hip-hop songs where they talk about life and they spit that real shit, but right now, there’s not a lot of people talking about real shit. Whenever I want to cry, whenever I want to sit down and have a nice cry, I’ll listen to some Bob Dylan. Or whenever I’m trying to have a good time and stay in a positive mood, I listen to hip-hop. Because it’s fun. I think hip-hop is important because it brings people together in a beautiful, happy way.” (Zisook, 2017). A large portion of the Hip-Hop community took a lot of offence towards this statement. In an article titled, ‘Here’s Why Post Malone Is a Problem‘ from Complex Magazine, Shawn Setaro writes “This shows a stunning level of ignorance about black music and culture (and, by extension, the people who make it). If you can’t find hip-hop that makes you want to cry or think about life, you’re either not looking very hard or you’re listening in a way that precludes you from hearing any emotion you can relate to. It’s hard not to see either as anything but racialized dismissiveness.” (Setaro, 2017)
My opinion
Now I can definitely see how in some cases cultural appropriation can be considered very problematic. But in the case of Post Malone I can’t say that I agree with it. Regarding the statements that he’s apart of the Hip-Hop culture but doesn’t invest or do anything to further the evolution of Hip-Hop, I think is a very opinionated thing to say. I argue that plenty of people would argue the complete opposite and say that he blends different genres together to create a unique sound that can be identifiable as Post Malone. I read an article from odyssey that said something I, and I think a lot of others can agree with. “While Post’s career has excelled because of his rap, he’s shown a great interest in other genres and includes a wide variety of genres and genre-mixing in his work.”(Wittorp, 2018). Combining all of these genres lead to more creative projects and I think that’s a big part of why I don’t really see why it’s such a big issue in this case. Like I said i’m not really even a fan of his music, but he’s obviously inspired by different genres and trying something new. Regarding the statement he made about Hip-Hop, I think that a lot of people took that out of context and only saw “If you’re looking for lyrics, if you’re looking to cry, if you’re looking to think about life, don’t listen to hip-hop”. He never said that Hip-Hop is void of any of these things. He’s just saying that today’s Hip-Hop is filled with a lot of rappers talking about the same themes eg. Money, women, fame, violence etc. He followed up saying “There’s great hip-hop songs where they talk about life and they spit that real shit, but right now, there’s not a lot of people talking about real shit” straight after. A lot of headlines and people criticising Post only chose to show one part of what he said instead of letting him explain himself. So do I think Post Malone is a Culture Vulture? No. But this doesn’t mean I don’t understand or empathise where others are coming from.
I know people might not agree with my opinion on the matter but I’d love to discuss this issue with others as its something I find very interesting and have a lot more to say about the topic. So I’d love to hear your opinion and thoughts.
References-
ReachOut.Com, 2019, ‘Why Cultural Appropriation isn’t Cool https://au.reachout.com/articles/why-cultural-appropriation-isnt-cool [28 August 2019]
Setaro, S, 2017, ‘Here’s why Post Malone is a problem’ https://www.complex.com/music/2017/11/post-malone-and-racism [29 August 2019]
Wittorp, M, 2018, ‘We’re sleeping on Post Malone’s versatility as a musician https://www.theodysseyonline.com/post-malones-music [29 August 2019]
Academic Source-
Han, H, 2019, ‘Moving from Cultural Appropriation to Cultural Appreciation’ https://eds-a-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.uow.edu.au/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=7&sid=bfdc34ce-8be7-4d0a-aec7-1deca86e785a%40sessionmgr4006 [2 September 2019]
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