For #BlackHistoryMonth we need to address how BIPOC can't exist in rock and metal without conforming to an idea of whiteness.

We embrace white rappers like MGK or Chase Atlantic & classify them as alternative, for the same reasons we dismiss Juice or Scarlxrd as "just rap."

The only time rock and metal embrace rap is when it’s white faces & voices.

The current emo-rap wave has been paved by black artists, but it’s weird that these artists (Juice Wrld, Lil Uzi, etc) only get categorised as rap or urban when there’s clearly alternative influence.

"But rap isn't alternative!!1"

Okay, explain Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit, Falling in Reverse, Atilla, Hollywood Undead.

You only like black innovated music when it "sounds" white, I'd argue lil peep is only discredited because he heavily borrows influence from black artists.

Making arguments like this is counterintuitive, because it fails to acknowledge that the climate of emo is SO white-dominated, that anything outside of that we immediately consider "not emo."

Moreover, where the actual fuck do you think artists like FIR got their inspiration from? Black artists. I think they even covered Gangstas Paradise many moons ago?

Rap and emo can and do go hand in hand, your idea is just built in whiteness and it's time to decolonize that.

Alternative radio stations, magazines, media outlets, and the whole industry need to keep the same energy they have for Chase Atlantic and MGK as they do for Scarlxrd, Lil Uzi, Juice Wrld.

To finalise: it feels like BIPOC have to "sound white" to be "real emo", correlating with how the emo aesthetic perpetuates its core look in whiteness i.e. if you don't have flippy hair & pale skin, aka white eurocentric features, ur not "real emo" and I'm tired of it.