Billie Eilish's Lying in Hip-hop Statement

Overview

Billie Eilish's Lying in Hip-hop Statement refers to comments pop star Billie Eilish made in an interview with Vogue in February 2020. In the interview, she denounced the fact that rappers will lie about owning guns and having girls in their music. The statement caused many Twitter users to comment on Eilish's ignorance and her use of a common claim.

Background

On February 3rd, 2020 Vogue^[1] published an interview with Billie Eilish from their March 2020 issue of their magazine featuring Eilish on the cover. In the article Eilish stated:

“There’s a difference between lying in a song and writing a story. There are tons of songs where people are just lying. There’s a lot of that in rap right now, from people that I know who rap. It’s like, ‘I got my AK-47, and I’m fuckin’ . . .’ and I’m like, what? You don’t have a gun. ‘And all my bitches. . . .’ I’m like, which bitches? That’s posturing, and that’s not what I’m doing.”

Spread

On February 4th, 2020, both Genius^[2] and XXL Magazine^[3] took to Twitter to share Eilish's statement on Hip-hop and received over 13,100 likes and 24,500 likes respectively in two days. Twitter user @EvanMartinez25^[4] commented that "Someone should bring up the fact that she basically already had connections at the age of 11 and never had to grind like a lot of Hip Hop artists do. But hey, what do I know? 🤷‍♂️" (shown below, left). The tweet garnered over 2,600 likes and 170 retweets in two days. That same day, Twitter user @marty_freudman^[5] tweeted, "BREAKING: Billie Eilish repeats tired talking points about rap and hip-hop that have been around since the 90s" (show below, right). The tweet received over 2,900 likes in two days.

Various Examples

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External References