Ariana Grande and the Art of Faux-Blackness
Minority talent thrives in white packaging. Welcome to America.
https://play.ht/articles/5a022e5a-e218-4269-808a-c74e4ab2fdd4
Ever since social media became the stock market of celebrity currency, trending has been the new black. Nothing screams “You made it, girl!” like being the center of one hot topic (How you doin’?) after another.
By those standards, Ariana Grande is hot stuff indeed. In recent weeks, she’s been all over the place — even when she wasn’t anywhere in sight: She scored her first big headlines of 2019 when she boycotted the Grammys over the producers’ refusal to allow her to sing a hit from Thank U, Next, her fifth studio album and fastest-seller yet.
A few weeks later, her ex-fiancé Pete Davidson tossed a heckler out of his stand-up gig in New Jersey after the guy referenced Grande without naming her in a spectacularly tasteless joke. Then she got dragged on social media when Manchester Pride organizers chose her over viable LGBTQ musical acts as the headliner of its August event.
She even scored her own “unpopular opinions” shade thread on Twitter. #BabyYou’reAStar
The loudest controversy of Grande’s new imperial age, though, is more complicated and considerably more, well, grande…
