Taylor Swift announced her new single, "Shake It Off," and debuted its music video during her Yahoo! live stream on Monday. Directed by Mark Romanek, the video has already earned more than 4 million YouTube views, but not everyone is psyched about it.
Odd Future's Earl Sweatshirt took to Twitter to call the video "inherently offensive and ultimately harmful." He accused Swift of "perpetuating black stereotypes." The rapper claims he didn't need to watch the video to know to call it cultural appropriation. Swift's other critics have echoed that sentiment: Jezebel called it a "cringe-worthy mess" and Consequence of Sound asked its readers, Is Taylor Swift's New Video Racist?
Here are Earl Sweatshirt's full comments:
haven't watched the taylor swift video and I don't need to watch it to tell you that it's inherently offensive and ultimately harmful
— EARL (@earlxsweat) August 19, 2014perpetuating black stereotypes to the same demographic of white girls who hide their prejudice by proclaiming their love of the culture
— EARL (@earlxsweat) August 19, 2014
