Interestingly, this isn't the first person I've seen criticize "Royals" for its alleged racist jabs:
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This is a racially tinged song that ***** on a raft of signifiers associated exclusively with rap, and this bs about her “opting out” that she’s offering and people above offer in defense of the song betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what rap’s materialism is actually about, i.e., celebrating ascension from poverty, and who rap’s consumerist messages are actually addressed to, i.e, not white teenagers from New Zealand. You can’t opt out of something you were never invited to opt into in the first place, and when a rapper brags about his jewelry as a symbol of his emergence from inner-city poverty and derides other rappers’ ****** jewelry, he is not actually pressuring white middle-class people (or white middle-class children in distant lands!) to go out and buy stuff that would look ridiculous on them, or making fun of them because they got their engagement rings at the suburban jewelry megastore, or in any way imposing anything on them such that they can “opt out” of it. What’s really offensive and stupid about this song, though, is that all these things that “everybody’s like [rapping about]” are, in fact, not things that anyone raps about in 2013. She lists a brand of car that went out of production last year, a brand of champagne that Jay-Z and other rappers stopped rapping about seven years ago when the CEO said he couldn’t help it if rappers drank his products but he wasn’t too glad that they did, a brand of vodka that also hasn’t been fashionable to rap about for over five years, and a gold teeth trend that died out in 2005. Did she write this song when she was 8, or did she just write a song ******** on rap when her whole knowledge of it seems to be based on about five ten year-old songs?
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You know, I’ve read a lot of “but she’s from New Zealand! It’s different there!” but the problem with that argument is that when it still produces something that is functionally no different from an appalled commenter on a New York Times piece on top 40 (the “and every song’s like” part, which is what people are objecting to), maybe it’s a red herring
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I really hate "Royals," but even I don't really agree that it's necessarily racist. I think it's incredibly sanctimonius and self-satisfied, that its dismissal of what "every song is like" is out of envy than actual valid opposition to it. She seems to be rationalizing opting out of "diamonds on a timepiece" and so on as being above all of it ("we aren't caught up in your love affair") but in reality it's more due to the fact that she can't
afford to do it, because she's not a
royal (i.e. she's poor). She's essentially priding herself on being poor and acting like she's better than rich people. Which is annoying.
But accusing it of racism is a stretch.
Such a racist little troll.
