She’s bragging, not apologizing, about doing something wasteful-an empowering rebellion, supposedly. It’s a tale of mega-wealthy indulgence that’s both charming and sickening, a combination that Grande tacitly acknowledges with this song. After calling off their engagement, she went with six of her best friends to Tiffany, got drunk on champagne, and bought everyone in her posse her own engagement ring. The lyrical concept for “7 Rings” originated from Grande coping with her super-public breakup from the comedian Pete Davidson last year. She’s wearing the culture as a costume-or even as a joke-not unlike white frat guys putting on fake grills for a “ratchet” party. But “7 Rings” is raising hackles because it regresses to a more cartoonish, and imitative, use of black music than she’s done before (not to mention the video’s evocation of Japanese kawaii). Grande teetered the line on those questions without much incident till now. Does the pop star draw upon her influences in a way that feels original? Does her work disrespect or honor those influences? Is there a double standard in how her work is received? One line of thought puts it in economic terms: Are marginalized creators being materially harmed and erased? But on another level, there are questions of aesthetics and tastes.
But some commentators have grumbled that her “blaccent” and even her spray tan seemed part of an old story about white people profiting off of black aesthetics to project a sense of edge without feeling any of the associated struggle.Īppropriation remains one of the hardest-to-talk-about phenomena in pop culture, which is, fundamentally, a hodgepodge of widely circulated ideas that originated in specific subcultures. Patti LaBelle lovingly called Grande a “little white black girl” while presenting an award to the star in December. But it has been remarked upon in ways positive and negative. This history hasn’t led to the sort of controversy that, say, met Miley Cyrus when she made herself over as a gold-toothed twerker in 2013. In addition to her extraordinary voice, neurotic charisma, and glittery bath-bomb aesthetic, Grande’s success has increasingly relied on elements of rap and R&B culture: its slang (last year, issa was every third word Grande said in public), its beats (Pharrell injected her 2018 album, Sweetener, with thump recalling that of his band N*E*R*D), and its stars (all of the guest vocalists on 2016’s Dangerous Women, the album where she made a show of leaving behind child-star innocence, were black). What Grande is definitely facing, though, is that familiar pop-star chapter: a cultural-appropriation backlash. Then again, we’re living in the era after the “Blurred Lines” judgment, which determined that the “feel” of a song can be actionable.
To my ear, Grande’s delivery and lyrics do recall all the songs “7 Rings” has been compared to, but not so precisely that you can bet on a slam-dunk copyright-infringement case against her. Rap flows-particular verbal rhythms and rhyme patterns-can be viral and collaborative things, bubbling up as one emcee’s innovation then quickly becoming ubiquitous. Whether Grande has a serious plagiarism scandal on her hands is unclear. 2 Chainz suggested the music video ripped off the pink trap house he set up as a promotional and public-health effort in Atlanta, and other people noted similarities with his song “Spend It.” For the chorus, a marching-formation beat kicks in and Grande whispers, in a clipped rhythm, “I want it, I got it, I want it, I got it.” In the bridge, she raps in a kind of ranging, liquid style reminiscent of Beyoncé and Nicki Minaj’s “Flawless (Remix),” with a reference to The Notorious B.I.G.’s “Gimme the Loot.” After the single was released last Friday, two rappers-Princess Nokia and Soulja Boy-posted videos accusing Grande of stealing their flows. It’s a rap and R&B song, inspired by-or taking from-black artists. “Breakfast at Tiffany’s and bottles of bubbles / Girls with tattoos who like getting in trouble,” she sings in place of the “Raindrops on roses / and whiskers on kittens” made famous by Rodgers and Hammerstein, who are listed among the 10 songwriters for the pop star’s latest single.īut this is not an Austrian Alps show tune. Ariana Grande’s “7 Rings” lets you know, in its very first verse, that it’s copying.
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