Vlad Vs Black Twitter Gets Heated

Is this white, Ukrainian-American 50-year-old man (on the right, below) running hip-hop culture?

It’s a crazy question to ask, and for many Black users of X/Twitter - “Black Twitter” collectively - it’s a provoking one.

I usually just scan my feed and trending topics and don’t particularly care to reply or otherwise engage with strangers, yet earlier today I noticed Vlad’s trending with over 15K mentions. The reason? He got into a back-and-forth on X with a Princeton professor named Morgan Jenkins — whose responded to his initial post criticizing the mix of Kendrick Lamar’s Drake dis trak “Not Like Us.”

The song, produced by Mustard, is on its way to being a summer smash.

In any event, after some J. Cole-like soul-searching Vlad decided to apologize, publicly, to Jenkins. That apology really whipped social media users into a frenzy. The flood of hate towards Vlad - who has 5.82 million subscribers on his YouTube channel - casts hims as a ‘culture vulture’ exclusively because of his ethnic background and race.

Villains make money, though, in America… but that’s a story for another day.

I find this whole situation hysterically paradoxical and ignorant from both sides.

Black Twitter is full of shitty takes and anyone from any race that chooses to pay it any mind can see. Never mind that prejudices and hate are typed on a South Africa-born White man’s social media site.

Jenkins showed she’s a hater. Bad look for a prof, but black profs got a chip on their shoulder, from my experience.

In this latest racial battle, Princeton professor Morgan Jenkins got support from a professor of creative writing at University of Maryland College Park who chimed at Vlad calling him “colonizer,” and Marc Lamont Hill. And boom, go figure, in comes The Root with “coverage” of this madness, exploiting the racial animus for clickbait (as it should). Pretty funny they’d use an old pic of Vlad that showcases his smug personality.

Black Twitter’s a Sh*T Swamp

Black Twitter is often unapologetic and throws that up in whitey’s face any chance it gets. Jenkins has the right to speak out of course, but isn’t doing herself any favors, in my opinion. She is aggrieved, spewing built-up rage towards white men in hip-hop culture.

Why so much hate? Had this demographic not help propel the rise and commercialization of hip-hop and making many black millionaires?

Apparently, by Jenkins’ logic, white people and Black culture should be segregated. Really? What do you make of Eminem, Macklemore, or Paul Wall and Dave Mays, or MC Serch who was the plug that got Nas a record deal at Columbia as a teen? (see below).

Jenkins may have struck a nerve that rallied Black Twitter but there’s the inconvenient track record that shows how off she is. The indisputable Hip-Hop bible, The Source Magazine, was founded by a white dude, Dave Mays, at his Harvard dorm room in the 80s. He’d go on to hire a black, Guyanese-American Princeton grad as an editor, Selwyn Hinds, whose memoir is one of my favorites. Now, the cypher’s complete, right?

Who knows where this latest battle in the culture wars leads? Stick around for Credit To Culture newsletter to find out, and tell a friend.

Peace, Slav

I didn’t really start off this newsletter with an intro, but oh, well, so be it … Shout to the homie Nicole LeMay in Seattle for gifting me this hoodie. And shout out to Kendrick Lamar for his body of work, including the dis entries. He low-key makes me look like a genius for picking him in my (current) top 5.