Apparent Colourism or Just Preference

By Kabura Ng'ang'a

A few weeks ago, Tory Lanez spoke on colourism in the music industry and asked artists to have women who are dark-skinned feel beautiful through their lyrics and video vixens. Just yesterday, after Chris Brown released his album Indigo, he is now under fire for some lyrics in one of the songs.

On his song, ‘Need a Stack’ he talks about liking women who have nice hair. This immediately took the colorist turn with the darker skinned women who have kinky hair. Some insisted that the only nice hair should have been referring to was clean and healthy hair and they felt that Chris was really not talking about that. This was based on the fact that most of the women Chris has dated are mixed hence they have softer to kinky hair. Mixed women are not as dark skinned as black women hence the colorist backlash to the musician.

We are at a point where we artists are being held at very high standards because people are more sensitized and sensitive to issues. Therefore artists are being cancelled and forced to pull down material because of the negative interpretation of whatever they put out for their audience. However, in the question of Chris Brown’s lyrics, might it have been just his preference even in the case of colourism or is it straight out bias colourism?