Our Fave is Problematic: 4 Ways Niykee Heaton Edges on Anti-Blackness

Like many fans, my introduction to singer, songwriter, and producer Niykee Heaton was through one of her many infamous YouTube acoustic covers of a popular rap song. For me, her 2014 acoustic medley that combined both Ty Dolla Sign and The Weeknd’s “Or Nah” and K Camp’s “Cut Her Off” was a certified bop. Her voice and her face were both beautiful, and I remember replaying the soothing cover countless times. Yet even back then, my anti-racism, justice-oriented lens would not allow me to buy in to Heaton’s work completely. Watching this blonde haired, blue eyed, cisgender, conventionally beautiful white woman sing-songing tales of street life in African American Language… Something never felt 100 percent okay (see #1 on this still relevant piece on “Hipster Racism”). Part of me knew that we have seen these dynamics play out countless times throughout history—white artists leveraging a certain proximity to Blackness in ways that allow them to be read as “cool,” “unique,” or interesting.”

Today, Niykee Heaton may be on the cusp of true super stardom. She boasts 2.1 million followers on Instagram, 5 million followers across social media, and 1,292,600 listeners a month on Spotify. Her break out hit single “Bad Intentions (Remix feat. Migos)” has recently garnered over six million views on YouTube. I’ve been following Heaton’s soulful, soothing sound for a while, and a large part of me wants her to win. In a lot of ways she is self-made, she endures a lot of disgusting misogyny and slut shaming, and she writes and produces almost all of her own music. Indeed, a lot of her music is actually really good, as the sexy track “OT” from her solid March 2016 project The Bedroom Tour Playlist remains among the best tracks of 2016 thus far.

So why can’t I shake that so much of Heaton is so racially problematic? And what does it mean for me as a Black young woman to still be a fan? Here I try to think through some of these issues:

 

1. Heaton’s Aesthetic Appropriation of Blackness, Particularly Black Female Womanhood:

Like white female celebrities such as Kylie Jenner and Iggy Izalea, Niykee Heaton has received pushback on social media for her appropriation of Blackness through dress/ styling. Also, while Heaton (to my knowledge) has never admitted herself to getting lip injections, many of the comments of her photos and tweets note the dramatic difference in the size of her lips, breasts, and infamously large butt from the beginning of her career to today. To be clear, my critique is not of women having plastic surgery—women have the right to do whatever they want with their bodies. However, we know that women of color have been historically mocked and denigrated for their large lips, big butts, and of course dark skin. These parts of their physicality then also become “in” or “trendy” when white women such as Kim Kardashian (and Heaton) take center stage in popular discourse. Within this larger context of Heaton’s mobilizing of hip-hop culture and Black physical aesthetics, we must be willing to ask tough questions about the implications of her styling choices.

Perhaps the most noteworthy marker of appropriation is Heaton’s look in the “Bad Intentions Remix (featuring Migos)” music video. A number of things are racially problematic about this video; however, I’m focusing now on the aesthetic choices. In the clip, Heaton dons a noticeably dark tan, cornrows, and a sort of silk scarf on her head that appears to mimic the look of a do-rag. Upon the release of the video several viewers on social media called Heaton out for cultural appropriation, critiquing the ways in which Heaton “tried on” Blackness, particularly within the context of her playing a bank robber. A viewer on Twitter with the handle @YoungGawhd noted, “Nice Blackface too btw. It must be great to put on that fake tan and never worry about being targeted for ur skin color” (yep, see #4 of this list). On July 5^th, Heaton tweeted a response to allegations of Blackface, stating “…its called I live in FL, & got a spray tan for a music video as advised. a flaw is exercising character assassination like u.” Ah yes, it appears Heaton foreshadowed Taylor’s Swifts’ rhetorical move of calling legitimate critiques on her problematic behavior “character assassination.”

Incredibly, in another tweet, Heaton refers to her cornrows as “Post Malone braids.” The fact that cornrows—a Black hair cultural staple literally since pre-colonial Africa—were credited to Post Malone, a white male rapper with one recent hit song, reveals Heaton’s lack of either knowledge of or reverence for the culture which she aesthetically “borrows” from constantly. Cornrows have a rich cultural history for Black people worldwide, who have also consistently been shamed, punished, and denigrated for the hair style. Indeed, if you believe cornrows are “just a hair style” and “not a big deal,” please have a conversation with one of the Black children sent home from school for their style, the Zara employee of color who was humiliatingly told that the style was unprofessional, or the Black women who served in US army—which only recently lifted its ban or cornrows and several other natural hairstyles.

In short, cornrows on white women are edgy, cute, or interesting. On Black women, they are unprofessional, ghetto, and inappropriate. The difference has everything to do with white supremacy, Eurocentric standards of beauty, and intersections of racism, classism, and sexism. And to quote a great short and accessible piece on this question from Everyday Feminism, “mundane actions, like the way you wear your hair, can make a huge statement about whether or not you value people of color who are struggling with the atrocities of oppression every day.”

 

2. Heaton’s Proximity to Hip-Hop and Blackness as a Marker of Her Uniqueness/ “Edge”:

As I have stated previously, much of Heaton’s initial success came from her YouTube covers of popular rap songs. Perhaps most famously, her cover of Chicago rapper Chief Kief’s anthem “Love Sosa” has garnered over three million views. In interviews, she states that she was the “only kid” who listened to hip-hop in her hometown of Geneva, Illinois (a fact that is difficult to believe given hip-hop’s enormous popularity and global influence, but whatever). Heaton suggests that this made her “different,” and in an interview with legendary hip-hip journalist Sway Calloway, she files her interest in hip-hop under reasons why she was an “outcast” in Geneva and bullied as a child.

To be fair, it appears that Heaton has given at least some thought to the implications of these covers. On Sway’s show, Heaton notes, “I was always afraid of coming off like I was mocking rap, or like making a joke out of it… Cuz I’m, a white girl with long blonde hair playing…” Another DJ can be heard saying “Right…Appropriating” before Heaton finishes the statement by saying that she didn’t want to come off as though she was “making a joke.” Nevertheless, throughout her career, Heaton has capitalized from the “uniqueness” of her being a pretty white middle class cisgender female who is “really into” hip-hop and rap music and culture. To play on the classic Mean Girls quote, “she’s not like other [white] girls; she’s a cool white girl.” She’s into “ratchet” (her words) rap, “Laffy Taffy” by D4L is her favorite song, and she eats lots of junk food all the time—which is of course cute and endearing because she maintains her figure. Today, song with rap trio Migos is a certified hit. But to what extent should her her lane in hip-hop/ R&B be attributed to her white privilege in this space?

 

3. Heaton’s Tenuous Relationship to South Africa:

While raised in Geneva, Illinois Heaton was born in South Africa. Her mother is South African. In interviews Heaton claims a close connection to South Africa, and she has even mentioned the country previously in her lyrics. Her track “I’m Ready” states, “I’ve seen money in the streets of ghettos, Soweto, shadows fall/ Across faces of pain, still they strain, for greatness.” Here, Heaton’s working of a kind of proximity to “the hood” in the USA context also carries to her discussion of South Africa. Soweto is a predominantly and historically Black township. Sometimes compared to Harlem in the US, the space has historically been a rich and thriving space for Black culture and political activism. However, institutional racism and structural inequality have and continue to limit the township’s economic opportunity and upward mobility.  It is highly unlikely that Heaton’s mother lived in any place like Soweto, and any interaction that Heaton has had with South African is likely completely by choice, a kind of tourism. Like “the hood” in the US, Heaton’s whiteness separates her from the lived experiences of the countless people who have lived and do live in Soweto.

Perhaps most troubling is the ways that Heaton’s fans attempt to leverage her South African heritage when she is critiqued for cultural appropriation. When folks on social media questioned Heaton’s braids, many cry “She is (South) African!” To attempt to unpack all of the holes in this argument is behind the scope of this piece. However, it is most critical that we know and understand that South Africa (like the US) has a violent, complex history of racism and colonialism—try Googling “What was apartheid?” as a starting place. White supremacy has of course guided and shaped South Africa’s post-colonial history, as the minority population of white South Africans have and continue to hold the highest social, cultural, and economic standing. And perhaps most relevant to this conversation, white South African artists also have a longer history of appropriating Black South African culture, and participating in dehumanizing representations such as Blackface.

So Niykee Heaton is (of course) both white and privileged, in both a US and South African context. Citing her “African” ancestry as a defense against cultural critiques makes zero sense within the context of colonialism and global white supremacy. So what is she, and what are her fans, attempting to accomplish by leveraging her South African heritage as a defense for problematic behavior?

 

4. Heaton’s (Like Many Appropriators) Deafening Silence on Anti-Black Racism:

Twitter, and social media in general, has been an astounding force in taking problematic artists to task. People of color on Twitter have been willing to call out artists such as Justin Timberlake for building careers in large part on the backs of Black cultural producers, while remaining silent on issues affecting the Black community. Heaton’s own career has been no different. As several critics on Twitter have noted, despite the ways that Black culture and aesthetics are ubiquitous throughout her career trajectory, Heaton has remained largely silent on extremely high profile issues such as police violence and the activism of the Black Lives Matter movement. To quote the now ever-present adage, “everybody wanna be a nigga, but nobody wanna be a nigga.”

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On July 24, Heaton posted yet another picture on Instagram that emphasized her curvy frame and large backside. In part, she captioned the photo:

“when i was in high school, the term “thick” was foreign. i was fucked with every day for having curves. i was called fat, and gross, and ugly so consistently that eventually I began to believe it. the journey to self acceptance and self love was a battle i long struggled with. no, i am not petite, or delicate or dainty. but I am fucking strong. inside & out. 5’8″ and 150lbs. fuck the mold, we are our own ideals of perfection and beauty. #nbk “

In response to this caption, several readers on social media have questioned the authenticity of the post, by pointing out that Heaton was in fact pretty thin just a few short years ago. I am less interested in this critique, and I am more interested in the notion that Heaton is outside of “the mold” for ideals of “perfection” and/ or “beauty.” This rallying cry for body positivity falls slightly flat coming from the desk of a white, middle class, cisgender, able-bodied, white woman with thin privilege. And yes, despite her (arguably purchased) curves, within larger systems of sizeism and fatphobia Heaton still very much benefits from thin privilege.

Additionally, look. The fact is that the use of the term “thick,” nor the praising of women with curvy frames are new concepts. Black and Latina of communities of color have publicly lauded “thicker” frames for many, many years. Perhaps for the Niykee Heatons, the Kim Kardashians, the Kylie Jenners, and Niykee Heatons of the world curves are “in,” but for people of color curves have always been a way of life.

Again we see the inconsistency. Despite becoming besties with Migos, does Niykee not know this history of “thick”-ness within communities of color? Or does she just not respect it? Or perhaps she simply does not care either way. Because as a white woman from Genevia, Illinois, Heaton is in a privileged position where she does not have to know, understand, or care about worldviews or cultures outside of her own in a deep or nuanced way. She can pick and choose aspects that she likes from them—from their “ratchness” and their “trap beats,” their dark skin, their braids, and their curves.

My question now is can I be “woke” Black woman and still have “Devil” on my “mood” playlist, or bop to “Best Thing Ever”? For now, I’m a messy bad feminist who regularly listens to the Niykee Heaton songs that I enjoy, while ignoring the dimensions of her that I find problematic. And as for other Black folk? To quote Heaton herself: “Baby, we the best, huh/ They may know our names/ But they ain’t no us.”