Bruno Mars Gets Slammed for Being a ‘Cultural Appropriator,’ Stirs Up Debate on Twitter
Bruno Mars is a Grammy-winning pop superstar but to some critics, they see him as a “cultural appropriator.”
A YouTube video by The Grapevine features critics slamming Mars for using his “racial ambiguity” to profit off of black music. “Bruno Mars is 100 percent a cultural appropriator,” said one YouTuber Sensei Aishitemasu. “He is racially ambiguous. He is not black, at all, and he plays up his racial ambiguity to be able to do cross-genre and going into different places.”
Sensei also criticized Bruno for not being original like Michael Jackson or Prince. She accuses the singer-songwriter of facsimileing the aforementioned artists and others.
"What Bruno Mars does, is he takes pre-existing work and he just completely, word-for-word recreates it, extrapolates it,” she rants. “He does not create it, he does not improve upon it, he does not make it better. He’s a karaoke singer, he’s a wedding singer, he’s the person you hire to do Michael Jackson and Prince covers. Yet Bruno Mars has an Album of the Year Grammy and Prince never won an Album of the Year Grammy.”
Aishitemasu's comments have sparked a huge debate on Twitter among those who support Bruno Mars and others who believe that he is culturally appropriating black music.
"Bruno Mars does everything “right” by the book. He was raised on “our” legends. He praised the music they made and acknowledges their influence on him. Puts black creators and writers in positions of success on 24K. Admired those legends. And still is catching hell," said one person.
Another commenter tweeted, "Bruno Mars is a 'culture vulture,' but a guy from Canada comes out with caribbean singles and a fake accent, and yall danced to it and made it a #1 single. I guess culture vultures are based on fandom."
Watch the video above and check out several tweets from the Twitter debate below.
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