Last night, the Youth Wing of “Black Twitter” (the most imitated and ingenious realm of social media, and a one-stop shopping mart for culture vultures) clapped back hard and hilariously with #TrapCover, a tongue-in-cheek but pointed bit of cultural commentary. While the inspiration for the hashtag rebuttal was the recent barrage of Vine and Youtube covers of Beyonce’s “Formation” and Rihanna’s “Work” singles, in which white people get their Pat Boone on, it was also a long overdue response to the practice of white folks doing “ironic” covers of rap and R&B hits (usually while strumming a guitar or tickling piano keys,) parodies that often veer into straight up racism, or versions which white Youtube commenters stress how much better the white cover is in language which makes clear that “better” = a white person is doing it.
A compilation of the #TrapCovers, in which black folks in Trap mode cover music by white artists, has just been uploaded to Youtube, and it is glorious. Highlights: Adele’s “Hello,” the Beatles’ “Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” (brilliant), Taylor Swift’s “You Belong to Me,” and “America the Beautiful.”
Sadly, the cover of “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” from Mary Poppins, which was pure genius, is not in this collection.
